Bounded Emotionality

Conceptual Overview

In Mumby and Putnam's 1992 article “The Politics of Emotion: A Feminist Reading of Bounded Rationality,” the term bounded emotionality was proposed as a means of challenging the dominant patriarchal assumptions underlying the notion of rationality in organizational theories. These assumptions viewed the impersonal, instrumental, rational norms of bureaucracies as the organizational norm. Although the article was framed as a feminist poststructuralist critique of Herbert Simon's bounded rationality, Mumby and Putnam argued that a more dialectic relationship between rationality and emotionality was necessary to provide the basis for theories that captured both men's and women's experiences of working within organizations. For example, they [Page 105]recognized the need to understand the ways in which emotionality informs rationality and rational decision making. Alternatively, they also saw the need to develop a more rational conception of emotion, one that recognized its knowledge-producing dimensions. Their main focus, however, was on explaining the concepts associated with bounded emotionality.

An organization that exemplifies a system of bounded emotionality will display particular norms, which include

• 1.
  Placing voluntary intersubjective limitations on the expression of emotions, such that individuals respond to others in ways that sustain the organizational community (includes coworkers, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders).
• 2.
  A tolerance of ambiguity and capacity to grasp two or more points of view simultaneously in decision making.
• 3.
  A heterarchy of goals and values that are organized and governed by the contextual relations within an organization.
• 4.
  The facilitation of an integrated self-identity for organizational members through breaking down the separation between public and private domains, and nurturing and supporting members as whole people (with emotions, bodies, and reason).
• 5.
  A labor process that is constructed within a community, and maintained through the legitimation of feelings and caring relationships among its members.
• 6.
  Valuing those work feelings governed by relational feeling rules, which are spontaneous, emergent, and meaning-centered.

Bounded emotionality, in particular the concept of work feelings, is an approach to thinking about the emotionality of organizations in ways that locate emotions as central to organizational experience. In contrast to emotional labor, which can often have adverse effects for workers (such as burn-out, stress, and dissonance), work feelings are viewed as being essential to well-being, motivation, and job satisfaction. The difference is in the way that emotions are organized: Emotional labor takes place within the instrumentalist framework of bounded rationality, while work feelings take place within the relational framework of bounded emotionality.

Critical Commentary and Future Directions

Understanding how emotions inform organizational life has become an increasingly important question in an era where the intersubjective realms of team-work, networking, innovation, customer service, and risk management frame much of the thinking about organizational theory and practice. As a theoretical concept, bounded emotionality is regularly held up as a model of an alternative organizational structure that can value work feelings and the more caring (of the self and others) aspects of emotional experience. As an empirical construct, however, bounded emotionality is still in the exploratory stages. This is partly due to its location within feminist organizational theory, and partly because research into organizational emotions more generally is still in its infancy.

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