Knowing the Unknowable? A Discussion of Methodological and Theoretical Issues in Emotion Research and Organizational Studies

Abstract

Emotion is only just beginning to be incorporated into organizational studies and relatively little attention has been given to methodological and related theoretical issues. These present considerable challenges, not least because emotion is considered to be especially elusive-private, intangible, transient, unmanageable, and even `unknowable-and is a complex that spans disciplinary divides and attention. At the same time, these characteristics and its relative novelty in organizational studies present the prospect of contributing to debates in critical social theory which both challenge and develop rationalistic and dualistic analyses which separate reason from emotion, private from public and body from culture, for example. The article explores some of these issues through a discussion of different claimed characteristics of emotion and associated methodological approaches and dilemmas. It is also shown how emotion research can draw attention to more general political and moral research issues as well as the emotional nature of producing knowledge. In addition to raising specific possibilities for research methods and topics, different broad theoretical directions for emotion research in organizational studies are outlined. This points to the prospects of enriching existing theoretical streams and/or constructively challenging the broader disciplinary theories from which they are derived.