Is it possible to study anxiety in organizations?

ABSTRACT

Anxiety has been traditionally studied by asking people to describe their emotions, or by deducing their emotions from their observable behavior. Such methods are, however, ethically doubtful in case of organization studies. Organization scholars do not have a moral right to ask people about their emotions. Further, there is no guarantee that people who were asked describe their emotions correctly. Even more uncertain is the idea of deducing emotions from behavior observed. There are at least two methods permitting to avoid these problems: Eliciting narratives, which permits to study a rhetoric of emotions, and analyzing descriptions of emotion in the literature (including fiction). It is this latter approach that has been used in this paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• emotions
• narratives
• fiction
• organizations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Anthropomorphized units: animals and objects.

2 Answering this question would require not merely another paper, but a full-blown debate, as opinions among organization scholars differ. I am firmly of the opinion that organization scholars do not have such a right.

3 For the latter, see e.g. Musson and Marsh (2008), Czarniawska (2015), Gabriel and Ulus (2015).

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety, accessed November 15, 2015. As to quoting Wikipedia, here is Davies (2011): “Analytical studies have shown that Wikipedia, for all its faults, can sometimes match the most prestigious academic brands. It has the virtue of being constantly corrected and updated.” 148). He quotes Dalby (2009).

5 More on that issue in another study that focuses on Polish war experiences: Flam (1993).

6 No wonder, as she is a political scientist with a doctorate in history and an MBA to boot (http://www.saraparetsky.com, accessed November 26, 2015).