Miner,

A. G. & Glomb, T. M. (2009). State mood, task performance, and behavior at work: A within- persons approach. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 112, 43 - 57. Contributions: Looks at the intra-individual (or within-person) relationships between mood and three outcome variables: o Task performance, o OCB, and o Work withdrawal. Examine the interplay between mood and speed/quality of performance in an episodic way. o Previous research linking mood and performance may have been the victim of time lag; moods are short-term and fleeting while performance is evaluated over longer periods. In addition to the main effects mentioned previously, also investigated: o Individual differences, o Meta-mood dimensions, and o Moderators. Key terminology: Meta-mood relatively stable individual differences in peoples tendency to attend to their moods and emotions, discriminate clearly among them, and regulate them. (Salovey et al., 1995, p. 128) There are three primary meta-mood dimensions: o Attention reflects the amount of attention individuals allot to their mood and their perceptions of the importance of attending to and monitoring mood. o Clarity reflects how clearly individuals experience their moods and their ability to differentiate among moods. o Repair reflects an individuals attempts to regulate or repair their moods to engender a more favorable mood state. Hypotheses (Supported. Not Supported.): H1a: Average call time will be shorter when mood is pleasant than when mood is unpleasant (after controlling for service quality. H1b: Customer service quality (as rated by customers and self-ratings) will be higher when mood is pleasant than when mood is unpleasant (after controlling for call time).* H2: Pleasant mood will be positively associated with voluntary OCBs. H3: Pleasant mood will be positively associated with work withdrawal. H4a: Individuals higher on meta-mood clarity and attention will show a stronger relationship between pleasantness of mood and average call time than those lower on clarity and attention. Partial support. Attention moderated the relationship, but clarity did not. H4b: Individuals higher on meta-mood clarity and attention will show a stronger relationship between pleasantness of mood and customer service quality than those lower on clarity and attention. H5: Individuals higher on meta-mood clarity and attention will show a stronger relationship between mood and OCB than those lower on clarity and attention. H6a: Individuals higher on meta-mood repair will show a stronger relationship between work withdrawal and pleasantness of mood than those lower on repair. H6b: Individuals higher on meta-mood repair will show a weaker relationship between work withdrawal and pleasantness of mood than those lower on repair. * Customer service quality was rated so consistently high (by customers) that there was no variance and it was withdrawn from the analyses. So this ended up being a test of self-rated customer service quality and mood.

Method: 108 employees from an inbound call center for a Fortune 500 company filled out one morning and 4 or 5 other randomly scheduled surveys, per day, for three weeks. Call length was recorded automatically by the organization, and the customer rated quality of service was obtained through follow-up calls with the customers. Discussion: As predicted by the information processing model and their hypotheses, when mood was more pleasant, call center employees were likely to be on the phone with customers for a shorter period of time by solving their problems more quickly. In terms of time, roughly one standard deviation increase in mood resulted in a 40 sec. reduction in call time. This is roughly 5% of the length of a call, which means this finding could have substantial financial implications associated with it. The relationship between momentary mood and call time was moderated by the degree to which participants attended to their moods. Participants who attended to their moods more showed a stronger relationship between mood and call time. However, meta-mood was not a moderator between mood and self-rated service quality. The authors suggest that these mixed findings highlight the impact individual differences can have on the mood-performance relationship. While the lack of relationship between customer service ratings and mood were contrary to Miner & Glombs hypothesis, they argue that the implications of this are that mood is not actually a source of bias in customer service ratings. Although previous research has suggested an association with positive mood and OCB, this study did not find the same relationship. Though there was a trend toward positive mood relating to voluntary OCB, and negative mood relating to involuntary OCB. A possible reason is that their measure of OCBs was much narrower than more often used measures of OCBs, and was created for this particular study. Additionally, the current study showed that positive mood was related to work withdrawal. The authors suggest that work withdrawal serves as a type of unpleasant mood state relief valve, which means that taking breaks can improve ones mood; however, this relationship was not necessarily true for those who controlled their mood cognitively (meta-mood repair). Instead they may be able to think of happy thoughts to repair their mood, instead of needing to withdraw in order to feel better. This can also be taken to mean that those who cannot cognitively repair mood may enact in more counterproductive work behaviors in order to regulate negative moods. Finally, the authors performed several analyses to determine if mood causes performance, if performance causes mood, or if they are reciprocally related. The results of this were largely inconclusive. Next, the authors examined the causal relationship of mood and OCBs as well as mood and withdrawal. No effects were found for any causal relationship. Therefore, the authors argue that, based on the previous literature, it is likely that all of these relationships are reciprocally related.

* Customer service quality was rated so consistently high (by customers) that there was no variance and it was withdrawn from the analyses. So this ended up being a test of self-rated customer service quality and mood.