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Worker Reason, Imagination and Emotion(s) in Change

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Abstract

In this chapter, given the backdrop of philosophical ideas discussed in the previous chapter, we move to consider what it is to reason about organizational change in an emotional state. We consider cognitive theory, which enables a perspective currently underexplored in the field. The chapter demonstrates how situations appear to emotional employees and the lessons that can be learnt for managing change, which fundamentally threatens the notion of identity. We also journey deeper into the recesses of the employees mind and explore the poorly understood phenomena of employee imagination. This is subsequently followed by another scarcely considered idea that employees often think about organizations by personifying them (i.e. anthropomorphisms). The chapter on the whole reveals the emotional employee’s mental picture of organizational change and the related obstacles and challenges this presents.

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Talat, U. (2017). Worker Reason, Imagination and Emotion(s) in Change. In: Emotion in Organizational Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47693-3_2

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