Emotion and Strategic Management: A Literature Review

The past few decades have witnessed increasing interest in human activities in the strategic management field, indicating a shift of attention toward behavioral and relational dynamics between strategic actors in strategic management. This trend has engendered a burgeoning body of research that follows the interpretivist approach where emotions have found their way into the strategic management literature. The current paper systematically reviews existing literature on emotions and strategic management to answer the following question: What role do emotions play in strategic management? Lacking a restricted time frame, the investigation included a total sample of 476 journal articles from 78 publication outlets and 110 book chapters narrowed down to 53 articles and 10 book chapters after a rigorous selection process with a satisfactory interrater reliability percentage. We present a structured overview of existing emotion constructs and related definitions that have been used in the strategic management l...