More than just an angry face: A critical review and theoretical expansion of research on leader anger expression

Stories about angry bosses in the workplace are relatively common. Have you ever wondered what causes their anger and how the expressed anger impacts the workplace? Our review of 58 studies on leader anger expression provides an overview of research findings on this phenomenon. The review demonstrates significant research progress in understanding leader anger expression, including its causes, consequences, mechanisms, and boundary conditions. However, the review also reveals that the current approaches to leader anger expression are quite static, which creates the need for a dynamic approach to examining leader anger expression. Integrating a range of theories, we suggest three ways of building dynamic models of leader anger expression, considering its temporal dimension, the dynamics between its mechanisms, and the complexity of emotional episodes in which anger is expressed. Our research contributes to the existing literature by being the first to take stock of leader anger expression research to date and propose a dynamic approach to understanding this phenomenon.

Trust in the leader alleviates the negative effect of leader anger expressions on leader effectiveness

Purpose Leaders often provide negative feedback to underperforming followers with the intention of helping improve their performance. However, the anger expression that is often involved in the delivery of the feedback may cause followers to infer negative intentions and, thus, harm the effectiveness of the leader. The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a relational perspective, the condition under which the negative effect of leader anger expressions on leader effectiveness can be alleviated. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 355 participants in total through two main studies and two validation studies. Findings The author found that leader anger expression in negative feedback delivery had detrimental effects on leader effectiveness through follower-inferred negative intentions. More importantly, the detrimental effects of leader anger expressions on leader effectiveness were alleviated when followers had high levels of trust in their leaders. Originality/value Integrating leader emotion and trust literatures, the present research is the first to examine from a relational perspective (i.e. follower trust) the boundary condition under which leader anger expressions influence leader effectiveness.

THE MODERATING EFFECT OF LEADER ANGER ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE AND FOLLOWER JOB OUTCOMES

This study investigates the moderating effect of leader anger on the relationship between LMX, which is one of the most prominent leadership theories, and the three follower job outcomes of affective commitment towards the organization, trust in leader, and job satisfaction. This study was undertaken in the format of an experiment which is followed by a survey in which four groups of different fictional leader types were created, and respondents were asked to answer questions about these leaders assuming that they work with the described leader. The results of the study reveal that leader anger moderates the relationship between leader-member exchange and the three follower job outcomes in such a way that they result in diminished levels of affective commitment towards the organization, trust in leader, and job satisfaction in cases of both high LMX and low LMX leaders.