INNER WORK LIFE –UNDERSTANDING

THE SUBTEXT OF BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

(Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer)
Submitted by :Ridhi Arora
INTRODUCTION
Inner Work life may be defined as the composition of complex operations of emotions,
perceptions and motivations which acts as a strong driver of regulating Knowledge –
worker’s performance .Inner work life in psychological terms can be stated as dynamic
interplay of perceptions that range from impressions to more developed theories and its
occurrence and meaning, emotions as sharply defined reactions or can be seen as change
in the form of moods of people (good or bad moods) and motivation which acts as a
driver of what needs to be done at the given moment .Organizations today are putting
more efforts to understand about the inner thoughts , feelings and emotions of their
employees as this not only enables managers in shaping their behavior patterns towards
their employees but also helps in the identification of key drivers of motivation and
performance levels in the organizations .Another important thing that has been depicted
in this article is that there exists a strong relationship between emotion and cognition
which can be easily demonstrated in organizations as whenever something happens at
workplace , then it triggers cognitive , emotional and motivational processes which in
turn evokes perceptions of people thus affecting the degree of motivation and
performance of the employees at their workplace .

PROBLEM STATEMENT
Amabile and Kramer has stated that biggest challenge before the majority of the
progressive organizations of the world is that their employees seldom openly expressed
about their inner emotions, thoughts, feelings in front of their managers .Besides this,
another problem is that even when importance of Inner Work Life is known, but most
part of it remains imperceptible to others which results in making it hidden or
unexamined even by the individual who has experienced it.

RESEARCH DESIGN
The research design included both qualitative and quantitative research .For the purpose
of data collection various techniques and methods were utilized which included making
suitable format for diary entries to carry out the study under natural context or real time
and enabling 238 recruited professionals of a project team to complete their daily entry
forms respectively, rating method in which participants were asked to rate themselves on
various parameters like creativity, work-quality, commitment, team cohesiveness,
sending emails to participants and requesting them to provide suitable feedback and brief
description about events that happened during the entire day of work so as to know about
their state of mind, qualitative research technique of triangulation was used to triangulate
the responses from colleagues of the participants of the project team . For quantitative
data, mapping of daily diary forms, team ratings and content analysis of diary narratives
was done against the components of Inner Work Life.

ANALYSIS &FINDINGS
Diary study based on naturalistic approach which was conducted to measure the effect of
emotion on creativity showed that there exists causal relationship between emotion
(affect/mood) and creativity as it was seen through the study of diary narratives that
nearly over 50% of the people were found to have more creative ideas on the days they
had positive moods i.e. positive emotion was linked to higher creativity and vice-versa.
Besides this, the study also found out about the Carry-Over effect which implied that
more positive a person’s mood on a given day, the more creative he or she is the next day
as the same situation was seen in case of employee Marsha whose 80% of the creative
thinking followed all those days when her mood was higher than average. Other analysis
from the diary studies provided with the findings that there exists strong impact of
motivation on the employees as it has been demonstrated through the Intrinsic Motivation
Principle. Also another major finding was that people were found to be more creative
when they saw their leaders and organizations as more collaborative, cooperative, open to
new ideas, innovative vision with a strong willingness to reward the creative work.

CONCLUSION
In order to enhance the performance and productivity of the organizations , it is really
vital for employers and managers to know about the inner thoughts , feelings and
perceptions and to map the state of mind of their employees to clearly understand about
their Inner Work life to know what is going in the mind of their employees as people
perform better only when their experience of entire workday constitutes more positive
emotions , passion or strong willingness to work as a team , with leaders and hence
organizations and where there is existence of creativity, productivity , commitment and
collegiality .Simultaneously, managerial behavior should focus on two fundamental
things , firstly to enable people to move forward in their work i.e. enabling progress and
secondly , treating employees decently ,as ability to make progress at workplace helps in
strengthening Inner Work Life and by focusing on all these factors , organizations can
deliver value proposition and achieve the organizational goals .