Anger and Organization Studies: From Social Disorder to Moral Order

Anger: A Disruption of Order or a Signal of Underlying Disorder?

The view of anger as ‘a significant social problem worthy of clinical attention and systematic research’ (Beck & Fernandez, 1998, p. 63, italics added) persists among psychologists. Given its intent to harm a target (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004), references to anger as an individual disorder are not difficult to find, as already indicated. Seen in this manner, anger is often classified as a trait (i.e. a disposition to experience frequent anger), which is very different from state anger (i.e. an episode of anger occurring at a specific and temporally limited point in time). As an individual disorder (or psychopathology), the expression of anger is often seen as reflecting a poor ability to regulate emotions (Davidson, Fox, & Kalin, 2007). By contrast, at the organizational and social level, overt expressions of anger are seen as reflecting the power of different actors and judged as legitimate in certain circumstances. Studied in this way, expressions of anger have an impact on others and affects their behaviours (Van Kleef, 2014), at times intensifying competition and at others prompting cooperation. Faced with inappropriate outbursts of anger by superiors, peers or customers, workers in organizations may feel intimidated, bullied, or threatened. Solomon (2003) suggests that the fear of anger is rather visceral, that its mere display leads us to assume that there is a real threat of harm behind the expression. It is for this reason that some scholars maintain that the expression of deviant anger (i.e. anger that crosses the impropriety threshold in the Dual-Threshold-Model of anger; see Geddes & Callister, 2007) is an observer-driven phenomenon, depending upon where different organizations set the impropriety threshold and how individuals interpret it. ‘Emotional deviants’ are those individuals who fail or refuse to obey emotion norms. Consequently, they are often stigmatized and subjected to social controls, even though, under some conditions, they can become agents of social change (Thoits, 1989). Thus, the main protagonist of the film to be discussed presently, played by Henry Fonda, is first perceived by the other jurors as an emotional deviant, but his moral anger and the authority it commands turns him into an agent of social change through which moral order is restored and a social order is attained.

Perceptions play a crucial part in determining ‘deviant’ anger, and how it is defined and experienced. Therefore, anger must be viewed in connection with different emotionologies (i.e. society’s attitude toward the expression of basic emotions; see Stearns & Stearns, 1985). These generally cast the expression of anger as a threat to social order that must be regulated, for otherwise the achievement of collective purposes (see Holt & den Hond, 2013) might be at stake. Therefore, the expression of anger in the workplace – especially when it exceeds the impropriety threshold – can easily be seen as destabilizing power relations, presenting a challenge to organizational order, and acting as a precursor to strife and disorder (Fineman, 2001). It is no surprise, therefore, that psychologists have been busy assisting clients in regulating their anger more than any other emotion (Kristjánsson, 2005). Nor is it surprising – as already intimated – that research casts anger expressions by organizational participants as a problem, ostensibly undermining organizational effectiveness (Waldman et al., 2011).

We earlier suggested that a world without anger would be a compliant and acquiescent world relying, by necessity, on behavioural prescriptions seeking to choke up anger and restrict its expressions, demanding that people be ‘nice’ and ‘radiant’ with positivity. However, would this always be the best approach to organize people toward the accomplishments of collective goals? ³ Or, conversely, can sometimes a negative climate at work or expressions of anger prompt a reconsideration or improvement of organizational processes and effectiveness (Lindebaum & Fielden, 2011; Lindebaum & Jordan, 2014; Mitchell et al., 2014)? In raising these questions, we seek to cast anger in a more equivocal light, perhaps in the spirit of ‘daring to know’ in relation to ‘respecting and upending the world into which we are thrown through enquiry’ (Holt & den Hond, 2013, p. 1587). Anger undoubtedly has a destructive potential, but it can also bring latent conflicts to the surface, acting as a prompt to recreating moral order, most notably in response to violations of moral principles. In seeking to restore moral order, anger may bring about at least temporary disruptions to the social order. This can then prompt us to question how the social and the moral order are inter-related, and whether it is possible for social order to be based upon moral disorder and vice versa (but see Fox, 2008, for a different perspective). Instead of disrupting all order, anger, we shall argue, can act as an organizing principle for restoring moral order, thereby contributing to the conditions for a renewed and restored social order.

Different Causes of Anger

Few of us have failed to experience a surge of anger in response to an event that is experienced as profoundly disruptive – an event that either directly threatens us or those we care for, or, alternatively, violates something valuable, our values and beliefs, our relations or possessions, our concept of ourselves or our communities. In this essay, we shall distinguish anger that results from moral violations from other causes of anger. Specifically, we will go on to differentiate between (i) anger that arises from disruption of routine or goal frustration (A/F), (ii) anger that results from communication breakdowns (A/CB), (iii) anger that is a response to insults or what we term ego violations (A/EV), and (iv) anger that stems from the violation of moral order (A/M). These types of anger have been studied before (for reviews on anger, see Averill, 1992; Averill, 1993; Carroll, 2013; Geddes & Callister, 2007; Geddes & Stickney, 2011; Haidt, 2003; Stickney & Geddes, 2014). This is not an exhaustive list, but for the purpose of our essay suffices to demonstrate how different types of anger interact. Two further features of anger must be noted – its ability to dissipate itself rapidly and its capacity to mutate, to migrate and metamorphose. Thus, anger can shift its target quite readily as different causes and resulting behaviours sometimes coexist and interact as conflicts head for escalation, attenuation or resolution. This makes anger both a complex emotion and one that is particularly difficult to manage or address. It also makes anger a particularly interesting and useful object of study in organizational contexts.

Twelve Angry Men: From Disorder to Order … via Anger

The film Twelve Angry Men, highlighting anger as prompted by many different triggers and assuming many different forms, offers a fertile terrain for our exploration. Works of fiction are now widely recognized as legitimate fields for organizational research, not merely reflecting organizational realities but frequently helping to construct and make sense of them (see e.g.; Hassard & Holliday, 1998; Lindebaum, 2012; Parker et al., 1999; Phillips, 1995). In addition, works of fiction, Oatley (2009) reminds us, represent meaningful simulations of the mind, often with life-like consequences. Relying on the visual and visible emotional interactions, film lends itself especially to management and organization studies, inspiring several important contributions (Champoux, 1999; Zundel, Holt, & Cornelissen, 2013). In particular, film invites the viewer to engage bodily with the embodied emotions of the actors, deploying his or her own emotional responses in judgement of the ethical or unethical ramifications of the drama, an element already known to Aristotle in his theory of catharsis (Nuttall, 1996).

Our specific example is both relevant and significant for two reasons in the context of this essay. First, it directly invites the viewer to pass moral judgements on the guilt or innocence of the accused, effectively turning him or her into a thirteenth member of the jury. The viewer’s emotions are thus directly oriented towards moral issues, such as anger, which features prominently in studies on conflict management, negotiation and leadership (Van Kleef, 2014; Van Kleef & Côté, 2007). Second, the setting of the jury room affords insights into how a collection of strangers is temporarily bound together as members of a group faced with a demanding task – that of passing a unanimous verdict on the guilt or innocence of a young man accused of murder. The jury room is both part of an organization (the long-established organization called ‘a court’) and part of the wider social system that treats it as a major institution of justice in ‘free’ societies. Although in a given composition, the jury is a temporary part of the court organization, it is a vital part of this organization, without which it simply could not function. In discharging its mission, the jury must organize itself, establish the nature of its task and decide how to accomplish it within the parameters of a wider moral order, as interpreted by each juror. This inevitably unleashes some powerful emotions, including anxiety, guilt, solidarity and, of course, anger. As the film lucidly demonstrates, this results in considerable tension and conflict in the decision-making process among the jurors, with distinct roles assumed by different individuals as mediators, adversaries and protagonists. As such, the film lays bare the role of emotions both as organizing and as disorganizing forces, at times obliterating attempts at reasoned argument and at others initiating it, supporting and augmenting it – in much in the same way as documented in the broader social science literatures (Elfenbein, 2007; Solomon, 1993b). It is not accidental, therefore, that this film has been used or recommended as a teaching resource in numerous courses as well as offering a rich empirical resource for researchers into group dynamics, negotiation and emotion (see e.g. Adami & Hallander, 2015; Blessing & Blessing, 2015; Waller, Sohrab, & Ma, 2013).

In the film’s plot, a jury faces what appears to be a cut-and-dried case of a young man who has killed his father. Having listened to the evidence, eleven of the twelve jurors are convinced of the young man’s guilt and are ready to convict him. The twelfth juror, played by Henry Fonda, is inclined to review the evidence and refuses to go along with a summary verdict. At this point, this juror is seen as the cause of social disorder, the agent who disrupts unanimity and prevents the achievement of the jury’s task of delivering a unanimous verdict to the court. He immediately becomes the target of intense anger from several of the other jurors, the result of their frustration (A/F) at the failure to reach a quick verdict (some jurors felt ‘stuck’ in the room, ‘wasting’ their time). This precipitates a series of exchanges in which anger plays a major part and in the course of which each one of the jurors is forced to face some of his own prejudices and vulnerabilities. During these exchanges, there is a great deal of shouting, explosive posturing and threats of physical violence (A/EV). A great deal of anger results from jurors feeling that they are not being listened to (A/CB) or failing to make themselves understood (A/F). There are also numerous personal insults aimed at the values or qualities of each character. In addition, there is a sense of entrapment, for the jury room becomes a stifling prison (A/F) from which the jurors cannot escape – unless they can restore social order by reaching a unanimous verdict. As the temperature in the room rises, a summer storm erupts outside.

In the course of the exchanges among the jurors, each piece of the evidence is questioned. The word ‘fact’ assumes extraordinary significance and becomes the fulcrum point of heated arguments. How can someone dispute a ‘fact’ without impugning the intelligence of his interlocutor (A/EV)? Yet, one by one, the ‘facts’ are shown to be little more than conjectures and their meaning is shown to be much less clear-cut than at first sight. As the cut-and-dried case gradually unravels, different jurors begin to change their minds, opting for a not guilty verdict. This creates still more anger. Changing one’s mind is seen by the others as a sign of character weakness (A/EV) or of disloyalty to the group (A/M). Eventually, however, even the hardest-nosed jurors, for different reasons, change their mind, until there is but one, Juror no.3 played by Lee J. Cobb, the angriest among them, who still holds out for a guilty verdict. Unlike Henry Fonda at the start of the film, this juror finds the isolation of being the sole dissenting voice too much to endure; it turns out that his anger was fuelled by his own feelings of failure as a father and his alienation from his only son. Eventually, he collapses psychologically and, in tears, he concurs with a not guilty verdict. The film’s end sees the restoration of order and a celebration of the jury system as one that enables fallible human beings to reach proper decisions that reconcile social and moral order. The jurors have managed to reach a collective decision, in spite of their initial disagreements. Thus, the viewer is left with a sense that, whereas a miscarriage of justice would have preserved the social order at the expense of the moral order, the final decision draws social and moral orders together. Anger, as an organizing principle, is maybe the chief protagonist of the drama, eclipsing even Henry Fonda.

The film offers a complex and highly compelling panorama of anger as it takes over the proceedings and drives the group dynamics within the jury room’s four walls. In the first instance, anger is sparked by disagreement (A/F) and an inability to accept that someone else may see things differently (A/CB). What is a fact to some seems like highly unreliable testimony to others – a disagreement that at first seems both not permissible and impossible to bridge, as ‘the other’ is then cast as an ‘idiot’ (A/EV). This is compounded by the frustration that the disagreement creates (A/F), especially by the feeling of not being listened to and, therefore, not being treated with respect (A/EV). And this is further compounded by the experience of being trapped with others in a confined space. Anger then finds expression in personal insults and invectives aimed at denigrating the validity of the others’ views (A/EV) and imposing one’s own will. In the course of this expression, various alliances are formed and tested – for example, the use of racial or anti-working-class slurs alienates members of the original ‘guilty verdict’ alliance, reorients their anger towards the racist juror (A/M) and undermines the alliance’s coherence. A very interesting feature of the film is a close demonstration of the mobility of anger. Several of the jurors, it becomes clear, transfer their long-simmering rage (A/EV, A/F) onto the ‘kid’ who is the defendant, or onto other jurors. Thus, slum dwellers portrayed by one of the jurors as a seething mass of parasites, or ‘bleeding heart liberals’ or even ‘kids’, are seen as fair targets for a kind of ‘blind’ or ‘blanket’ anger that casts them as ‘the other’ who threatens both the social and the moral order.

Against this backdrop of anger, it would be easy to view the juror played by Fonda as the voice of reason who calmly tames the furious forces of disorder through logical arguments. While initially Fonda appears calm and ‘rational’, it is his moral anger, not always supported by reasoned arguments, that silences some of the anger of other jurors as the plot progresses. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes the following memorable exchange takes place among juror no.3 (L. J. Cobb) and juror no.8 (H. Fonda):

This scene demonstrates the productive aspect of anger. In confronting the major outburst of Juror no.3, Fonda fights Juror No.3’s anger (A/EV, A/F, A/CB) with anger (A/M), taunting him with expressions like ‘public avenger’, ‘executioner’, ‘sadist’ and so forth, and eventually prompts him to behave in a way that invalidates his position. The productive potential of anger is also demonstrated numerous times elsewhere in the film. When Juror no.3 seeks to bully an elderly juror into silence, a third juror steps in to defend him with a furious outburst for not showing appropriate respect to old age (A/M). In another scene, a racist outburst by one of the jurors prompts each of the other jurors to turn – in a highly dramatic move – their backs to him (A/M), effectively silencing him for the rest of the film. In yet another scene, a juror changes his vote from guilty to not guilty in the hope of finishing in time to catch a baseball match; he incurs the following outburst (A/M) by a juror who has up to this point been calm and measured:

‘What kind of a man are you? You have sat here and voted “guilty” with everyone else because there are some baseball tickets burning a hole in your pocket? And now you’ve changed your vote because you say you’re sick of all the talking here?’

In this and many other ways, anger acts to avert a miscarriage of justice in the film. This miscarriage would have protected the social order in the form of consensus and unanimity, but would have been morally indefensible: a – probably innocent – young man would have been sentenced to death. Instead of anger acting as brief madness, it acts as a moral and political force which restores the moral order, establishes boundaries between permissible and non-permissible disagreements and drives the plot forward, not towards disorder and disintegration but toward resolution and reparation.

This discussion highlights the role of moral anger and anger dynamics in restoring a moral order. Two qualifications are important at this point. First, as a dramatic artefact and the product of a Cold War discourse aimed at asserting the supremacy of a ‘democratic’ political system and the jury system as a bastion of social justice, the film inevitably exaggerates the productive qualities of moral anger. The successful restoration of moral order at the end of the film is certainly not the only possible outcome when the complex nexus of anger is unleashed. Nor is it the case that moral anger will inevitably prevail against other forms of anger or manage to reorient them towards a moral purpose. Undoubtedly, there are many instances when moral anger is silenced by superior forces, including anger resulting from ego violations of those in power. Yet, in offering a highly plausible and emotionally fulfilling resolution to the jury drama, the film demonstrates at least the possibility of moral anger acting in the capacity of restoring a moral order.

The second qualification concerns the interaction of anger with other emotions, including shame, guilt, fear, disappointment, despair, disdain, hope, solidarity and hate, all of which feature prominently and compellingly in certain parts of the film. Among these interactions of anger with other emotions, the nexus formed between expressed anger and felt shame is particularly interesting. Felt shame is related to negative self-evaluations based upon actual or anticipated depreciation of valued others due to a violation of standards, including moral standards (Creed et al., 2014). It is, therefore, evident that shame can be a key emotion in maintaining social order and control, especially when triggered by someone else’s rightful expressions of moral anger. As Scheff (1990, p. 75) notes, we experience social control as ‘so compelling because of emotions’, especially when ‘punishment’ combines an internal affective component like guilt and an external one like being shamed. Research suggests that felt shame often precedes expressions of anger and hostility (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). So it does not surprise us that Juror no.3 wants to ‘kill’ Henry Fonda in the film, after the latter declares in public that he feels ‘sorry’ for him for being a ‘sadist’. This accusation is particularly shaming (and, therefore, anger-producing), if the perpetrator is someone whose status is high at that point and whose target is already experiencing the change of opinion against his views as an ego violation. Another example of anger and shame working in tandem is when, following a racist outburst by one of the jurors, all the remaining members silence him by turning their backs on him. Therefore, anger and shame are closely related and go hand in hand. Indeed, prior studies have examined the so-called shame-rage spiral (Tangney et al., 2007). One reason for this – and this shines through in the longer quote – is that shamed individuals seek desperately to escape from the painful experience of shame. To do so, they become defensive, and externalize anger and blame onto convenient victims.

Conclusions, Implications and Questions

As can be seen from the above discussion, anger in the jury room turns out to be a highly judgemental, moral, even sanctimonious, if often misdirected, emotion (Solomon, 1993b). It is a highly mobile emotion, frequently changing target and triggering off different reactions of anger in other jurors. It is this mobility that accounts for why anger is often portrayed as a ‘blind emotion’ – it blinds the subject both in the choice of target and in the intensity of the aggression unleashed. Social movement studies, therefore, rightly suggest that anger and other ‘strong’ emotions can lead to misattribution of blame and distorted analysis, where the role of human actors is inflated while wider social structural constraints are neglected (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006).

In the film, the emotional intensity generated by anger often results in confusion and near-chaos situations. It is the moral authority brought by Henry Fonda’s well-managed and well-directed moral anger that provides the requisite counter-balancing effect to prevent this, displaying the productive potential of anger in several different ways. First, it is vital in establishing alliances among jurors who share the same outrage against a particular outburst (for instance, insulting an elderly juror or stereotyping all slum dwellers as ‘low-lives’). In this way, lines are drawn about legitimate and non-legitimate disagreement – for example, it is legitimate to disagree whether a witness could have seen the murder from the carriage of a moving train, but it is not legitimate to disagree over treating elderly people with respect. Furthermore, anger is a highly energizing emotion, propelling the proceedings forward. Without anger, the group dynamics of the jury would resemble a tame academic debate leaving most people where they had started. It is the presence of anger that drives the plot, through a number of crises and turning points, to its morally orderly resolution through an acceptance of permissible disagreement. At the end of the film, as the jurors walk in their different directions never to meet each other again, one may imagine wrongly that all anger has been silenced. On reflection, however, one realizes that several of the jurors are likely to nurse various mental injuries from their experience, which may surface in future angry outbursts. The orderly conclusion of the jury marks the end of one conflict and the possible start of future disagreements, inner or outer.

In the film, moral anger is shown to be acting in isolation, taming and defusing other types of anger or turning them into shame. However, it is also shown to act in combination with other types of anger in restoring moral order. In neutralizing and shaming the racism of one juror, moral anger combines with the anger arising from ego violations experienced by those jurors who see themselves as stereotyped on account of their ethnicity or class. In this regard, moral anger can be viewed as the indispensable part of the nexus of anger that restores the moral and eventually the social order. In so doing, we are not underestimating the dangers and risks of moral anger, which, like some other forms of anger may lead to obsessive and blind vengefulness as well as to disproportionate retaliation under the moral amnesty discussed earlier. Yet, in approaching anger as a resource, a dangerous and potentially destructive one, but also a potentially very fruitful one, we want to reiterate its two vital dimensions: (i) the informational and (ii) the energic. Both of these dimensions can be very useful in organizations. If anger is a brief spell of madness, there is not just method in the madness, but also a ‘message in the madness’, as indicated earlier. Anger can alert managers and other organizational stakeholders (e.g. workers, customers, shareholders, suppliers, but also trade unionists, whistle-blowers and others) to serious issues and initiate corrective action. Moral anger, in particular and uniquely among all types of anger, signals moral infractions and failings, prompting action, even at a personal and group risk.

Formal organizations may seek to silence anger but the implication of our argument is that in doing so they miss opportunities to repair flawed organizational practices and processes that harbour a variety of risks and dangers. As a tool for organizational diagnosis, therefore, anger offers valuable clues about the stress points in a particular organization. For this reason, Geddes and Callister (2014, p. 16, italics added) urge managers to ‘move beyond an angry response and assess whether the employee’s anger expression contains valuable information’. Thus, instead of an escalating spiral of anger, the information contained in anger expressions in relation to different breakdowns, frustrations and violations can prompt a response. The information contained in anger is not unambiguous and may need careful decoding and interpretation; both of these may call for extraordinary self-restraint, as exhibited by the character played by Henry Fonda, who appears particularly adept at decoding the anger of the other jurors.

Beyond containing coded information about the stress points in an organization, anger provides a hugely valuable, though volatile, source of energy, a source of motivation that, if properly contained and channelled, can unleash creativity, imagination and hard work. In this way, the racist juror is silenced when confronted with the collective outrage displayed by the others in the room. What rational arguments would certainly fail to achieve is achieved through the display of collective censure and exclusion. In this manner, the individual who would have been the ‘trouble-maker’ is side-tracked, enabling the remaining members of the group to move towards consensus and the restoration of the moral order. Naturally enough, in light of the important moral function of anger, we harbour strong reservations about all-encompassing suggestions that ‘reducing anger among employees is one potential avenue for decreasing unethical behavior in the workplace’ (Motro et al., 2014, p. 1, italics added). In arguing against this view, we are in no way ignoring the numerous instances when anger, in and out of organizations, can be misdirected leading to victimization, witch-hunting and scapegoating.

The informational and energic aspects of anger then can be deployed to facilitate an ‘organic order’. Again, without denying the negative and potentially destructive consequences of anger, it seems to us that a world without anger would be a world without correctives to political, moral and other infringements. It would also be a world low on energy, low on excitement and low on solidarity and compassion. In this respect, we should not forget that an obsession with containing and neutralizing anger, through various rules and procedures, can seriously undermine our ability to make sound and informed moral judgements (Solomon, 1993a). Of course, uncontained anger in public spaces can also fuel witch-hunts, lynching and every kind of immoral act. But anger also fuels protest movements against injustice and exploitation (Jasper, 1998, 2014); it draws neutrals in support of the weak and oppressed and it mobilizes collective action in pursuit of moral objectives. Emotions are, as Collins (1990) suggests, ‘the “glue” of solidarity-and what mobilizes conflict’ (p. 28).

These arguments call for a re-evaluation of what is meant by order and indeed organization – order is not a state of perfect and inert equilibrium, a stasis, but rather the aim of organization, organization constituting, as Ahrne and Brunsson (2011, p. 90) argue, ‘attempts to create a specific order’. Organization is thus a process, in which we constantly renegotiate our tolerance to disagreement and difference, exhibiting characteristics of a living system which adapts to ever-changing conditions (Wieland-Burston, 1992). In drawing this essay to a close, we would like to leave readers with a set of questions rather than a conclusion. Specifically, once a unitary conceptualization of a social collectivity is substituted with a pluralist or conflictual one, is it possible that anger represents an attempt to establish boundaries of permissible disagreements as well as an attempt to establish, maintain, renegotiate and challenge hierarchies of power and privilege? Is it possible that, in denying the moral function of anger, we become increasingly incapable of handling conflict at work in constructive ways? Who defines when anger is considered ‘deviant’ and what is the motivation behind it? In posing these questions, what can be gleaned about the distribution of power within organizations and beyond? We strongly believe that organizational theory, research and practice can find meaningful insights by seeking to understand and engage with anger instead of seeking to denounce and silence it.