Feelings about change: The role of emotions and emotion regulation for employee adaptation to organizational change

The goal of this chapter is to delineate the role of emotions and emotion regulation as a part of employees’ change responses. First, we will ask why change can act as an affective event: what are the reasons for employees to respond emotionally to change. Next, we focus on the concept and function of emotions, and how emotions relate to organizational change. Following, Gross’ (1998, 2015) process model of emotion regulation is discussed as an overarching, theoretical framework, that might explain which strategies employees use during organizational change. The chapter concludes with several suggestions for future research