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Pat Sniderman

Research student

Pat Sniderman is affiliated with The Open University's Centre for Human Resource and Change Management.

Current research

Disconfirming Managerial Communication, Its Impact on Employee Felt Emotions and the Moderating Effects of Relationship Quality, Trait Negative Affect and Emotion Regulation

My research explores the impact of negative managerial communication on employee emotions. I operationalize managerial communication using the disconfirming-confirming communication construct, defining communication as “disconfirming” when it belittles the other or invalidates his or her emotional experience, and “confirming” when it endorses and recognizes the other person as valuable and unique. My contribution is unique in that it builds upon, and integrates the three distinct research perspectives of interpersonal communications, emotions at work and leadership (specifically leader-member exchange).

As a result of my research I have found that disconfirming managerial communication is positively related to employee negative felt emotion, but that this is mitigated (reduced) when the employee perceives that he or she has a high relationship quality with the manager. Also, I found that employees’ personalities influences the relationship between disconfirming managerial communication and the employee’s negative felt emotion: While employees with a high Trait Negative Affect (NA) personality tend to experience higher negative felt emotion overall, employees with low Trait NA, described as more calm and relaxed, tend to notice it more when managerial disconfirming communication is high.

Finally, I found that while disconfirming managerial communication is (positively) related to employee negative felt emotion, but not to positive felt emotion, confirming managerial communication, by contrast is related to both positive felt emotion (positively) and negative felt emotion (negatively), suggesting that for maximum impact, managers should both increase their confirming communication and decrease their disconfirming communication.

 

 

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