| Summary: | Emotions are the very heart of people's experiences. Moreover, emotions determine people's
focus because they influences people's interests and define dimensions of people's worlds across
cultures. However, past research on emotions has argued about the meaning of basic emotions
being relative or universal cross cultures. It seems as if researchers are avoiding the issues
regarding the meaning of negative and positive emotions and how these emotions are expressed
within a cross–cultural context. One of the biggest concerns is that if the descriptions of people's
positive and negative emotions are not understood, it becomes difficult for people from different
cultural backgrounds to maintain healthy relationships and relate their emotions with one
another. Apart from the lack of research regarding the meaning of emotions across cultures,
emotion and emotion experiences in the extrinsic and intrinsic level to the employee, especially
within the cross cultural context, is also an under researched topic in South African
organisations. The reason for this is that organisations view emotions as a complicated subject to
understand and tend to focus more on maintaining positive emotions at work rather than creating
a stable emotional climate in an organisation for employees.
The lack of creating a stable emotional climate within an organisation and addressing adverse
discrete emotions and emotional experiences could have harmful effects on employees' mental
health and physical well–being. Furthermore, the absence of measuring instruments to investigate
the emotions and emotional experiences of employees may result into experiencing painful
personal incidents, lack of pride in one's accomplishments, lack of engagement and
commitment, negative behaviour and attitudes, and intentions to quit. These experiences might
trigger any negative emotions such as anger, hate, irritation, disappointment, despair and
frustrations. The above problem statement gave a reason to investigate whether the meaning of emotions
differs across cultures or is the same cross culturally, to identify the meaning structure of
emotions and to identify the emotions and emotion experience of the employees within the work
environment's extrinsic and intrinsic level experience to the individual. Therefore, the
Componential Emotions Theory was a relevant theory to determine the meaning of emotions
within the Tswana speaking group. The theory of determining emotions and emotion episodes by
the Affective Events Theory was followed as a way of determining emotions and emotion
experiences comprehensively in the Setswana speaking language group.
The Componential Emotion Theory was adapted to provide a clarification of how people across
cultures describe their emotion terms. According to the Componential Emotion Theory, emotion
terms across cultures can be described through cognitive appraisal, subjective feelings, facial
expressions, verbal expressions, gesture, bodily sensations, action tendencies and emotion
regulation. Regarding the Affective Events Theory (AET), the theory suggests that emotion
episodes at work can cause or be generated by either positive or negative emotions at work. The
theory represents an understanding of how employees emotionally respond to certain emotion
episodes that occur in various organisational settings.
The following research objectives were formulated based on the above–mentioned description of
the research problem. The research objectives were addressed into two research articles where
study 1 (the meaning of emotion) was the first research article and study 2 (studying the emotion
episodes and associated emotions) was the second research article.
The objectives of study 1 were to determine the meaning of emotions as conceptualised in a
literature review with specific reference to emotion dimensions; to determine how emotions and
culture are conceptualised in a literature review with specific reference to the Setswana language
group; to describe the Componential Emotion Theory in the literature as an approach to study the
meaning of emotion in cultural contexts; to determine if the 24 emotion terms as measured by the
Grid instrument, will refer to all components by revealing the meaning of an emotion structure in
Setswana; to determine if the Meaning Grid will display acceptable alpha coefficients when
compared with internationally studies having a value of 0, 80 and higher; to determine if the meaning of emotion (as measured in the context of the Componential Emotion Theory approach)
in a Setswana–speaking students sample will include the evaluation–pleasantness dimension; to
determine if the meaning of emotion (as measured in the context of the Componential Emotion
Theory approach) in a Setswana–speaking students sample will include the potency–control
dimension; to determine if the meaning of emotion (as measured in the context of the
Componential Emotion Theory approach) in a Setswana–speaking students sample will include
the activation–arousal dimension; to determine if the meaning of emotion (as measured in the
context of the Componential Emotion Theory approach) in a Setswana–speaking students sample
will include the unpredictability dimension; and to draw conclusions and suggest future research
about the meaning of emotion in the Setswana language group.
In this part of the study, the sample consisted of (N=122) and was taken from a higher education
institution in the North–West Province. A Setswana translated version of the shortened form of
the Meaning Grid instrument was administered. Four pilot studies were conducted (Meaning
Grid) which consisted of (N=28) and the data gathering was held in a higher education institution
in the North West Province. After all four pilot studies had been conducted, the shortened form
of the GRID (Translated in Setswana) was then administered using the paper and pencil method
(61 emotion features). Furthermore, by utilising the SPSS program, Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) was executed to determine the number of factors and indicate the emotion
dimensions present in the Setswana language group. In terms of inter–rater reliability, the
cronbach–alpha for each respondent was calculated on their rating of emotion terms. A cut–off
point for each item – total correlations of at least 0,20 – was used for inclusion for the final
determination of reliability. In essence, it means that unreliable raters were dropped in order to
keep the reliability high.
The Componential Emotion Theory of Scherer (1987) was applied and indicated a four–factor
model that should first be extracted namely: evaluation–pleasantness, activation–arousal,
potency–control and unpredictability. However, examination of a three and four factorial
extraction was not interpretable. The two emotion words, namely sadness and shame, were
eliminated because they were outliers in the rotations done. Further inspection of the Scree–plot
indicated that a two factor solution should be extracted. A principal component analysis (PCA) (done on the mean corrected scores) were therefore computed for two factors after a varimax
rotation - which was interpretable as Evaluation–pleasantness and potency–control dimensions.
The results and the interpretation of the two components (dimensions) are based on their
relationship with the 61 emotion features. A further analysis was done to determine the
component loadings of the 24 Grid emotion term on each factor. This gave an indication of the
position of the emotion terms on the specific factors (evaluation–pleasantness and potencycontrol
dimensions). Furthermore, the positions of each emotion term in relation with other
emotions were graphically represented in a scatter plot.
The objectives of study 2 were to conceptualise emotions at work as from a literature research;
To determine the relevance of discrete emotions, emotion episodes and the use of the Affective
Events Theory for the work context as presented in the research literature; to determine emotion
episodes that are experienced in the workplace by Setswana employees; to determine emotion
episodes and associated emotions reported on an extrinsic level of Setswana speaking working
adults; to determine emotion episodes and associated emotions reported on an intrinsic level of
Setswana speaking working adults; and to draw conclusions and make suggestions for future
research about the emotion episodes and related emotions of Setswana employees.
Within this part of the study a non–probability availability sample (N= 120) was taken from the
mining industry, tourism industry, and community services including the government,
manufacturing, agriculture, construction and the infrastructure industry. A pilot study was
utilised as a prerequisite for the successful execution, and completion of this research study
allowed the researcher to acquire thorough background knowledge about specific problems that
the researcher intended to investigate. Thereafter, the Tswana employees understood the
questions and could report without effort on emotion episodes at work that they experienced.
Data collection was done through the Episode Grid, and two questions on emotion episodes
were used for collecting emotion episodes in Setswana namely: the participants had to report
their most intense emotion episode that they have experienced within their workplace in detail,
for example, what happened? How did the episode begin? How did it evolve? How did it end?
Secondly, the participants were asked to describe the three most important emotions or feelings that were experienced in the particular event. The described episodes were then categorised into
different categories on intrinsic and extrinsic level experienced to the individual. Furthermore,
the specific episodes were divided into two types of category levels namely extrinsic emotion
episodes and intrinsic emotion episodes. The categories that were found on the extrinsic level
concerning emotion episodes at work were acts of management, acts of colleagues, company
procedure/company policy, acts of customers, work procedure, external environment and acts of
subordinates. Concerning the intrinsic level about emotion episodes at work, the categories that
were found included task problems/making mistakes, personal incidents, goal achievement,
receiving recognition, physical incidents, discrimination, workload and lack of control. The
emotions that were experienced on the extrinsic level comprised emotion terms such as anger,
disappointment, anxiety, hurt, irritation, disgust, annoyance, fear, sadness, despair, worry,
frustration, embarrassment, shame, hate, stress and anxiety. Regarding the emotions experienced
on the intrinsic level, the emotion terms that were described included anger, disappointment,
anxiety, hurt irritation, fear, sadness, despair, frustration, hate, pride, stress, compassion, guilt
and happiness.
Recommendations for the organisation and future research were made. === Thesis (M.Com. (Human Resource Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.
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