Introduction

Emotion and its display are critical and fundamental to human activity in all organisations. It is defined as

Yet, emotions are generally of short duration and are associated with a specific stimulus, as opposed to ‘mood’ which is more enduring, more diffuse and less related to specific stimuli (Frijda, 1993). Most theories of emotions acknowledge the relationship between specific emotions and specific types of behaviours. Thus, pleasant emotions are assumed to engender a number of important organisational processes, such as skill building, creativity, effective social relations, organisational commitment, collective orientations and prosocial behaviours (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2013).

For many years, emotional reactions at work were seen as disruptive, weak and a deviation from the sacred rationality in the organisation (Zembylas, 2005). But, during the last two decades, a greater legitimacy has been given in many Western countries to emotion management and displays in the workplace, and the research on emotions in organisations began to deal with the question of why and how employees may display or manage particular emotions, including emotions that differ from how they feel (e.g. Ashkanasy, Zerbe, & Hartel, 2002). In this sense, life in schools is complex substantially because emotion is integral to the processes of teaching and learning and, therefore, school leaders and teachers need to manage their school/class emotionally as well as rationally (Hargreaves, 2000). Both cognition and emotion are equally important in guiding, facilitating or inhibiting leadership and teaching capabilities (Harris, 2004).