Shaping top managers' moods: Board emotion regulation in the strategy-formulation process

Abstract

We studied a company that formulated a radically new strategy as it faced extreme performance pressures. We found that the company's top managers strategy formulation was aided by the board of directors affective actions. The board regulated top managers emotions, which helped the top managers to envision more strategic options and evaluate them more comprehensively. Our research enriches a dominantly cold cognitive view of strategy formulation by showing how various kinds of emotion regulation practices could benefit the strategy formulation process at different stages.