Middle Managers’ Regulation of the Emotions of Others in Strategy Implementation: A Process Perspective
基于对一家公共广播公司的9个月民族志研究，揭示了中层管理者通过理解情绪状态、人际调谐和鼓励重新评估三个相互关联的阶段，来调节团队成员的负面情绪以支持战略实施的过程模型。
Abstract This article develops a process model of how middle managers regulate the negative emotions of their team members to support strategy implementation. Based on a 9‐month ethnographic study in a public broadcasting company, we examine how managers navigate emotionally charged resistance to top‐down strategic themes during meetings. While prior research emphasizes individual techniques, we show that emotion regulation of others (ERO) unfolds as a sequenced process involving three interconnected phases: understanding emotional status, interpersonal tuning, and encouraging reappraisal. Our findings highlight that emotional influence is not achieved through isolated tactics, but through temporally coordinated and relationally attuned practices. In doing so, the study reconciles the tension between validating negative emotions and enabling emotional change. It advances research on middle managers by theorizing how they navigate emotional resistance in real time and contributes to ERO theory by demonstrating the importance of temporal coordination between validation and reappraisal.