HOW EMOTIONS MEDIATE ORGANIZATIONAL DYSFUNCTION: THE CASE OF STRAY DOG MANAGEMENT IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Scholars often attribute organizational dysfunction to a “failure” to learn, or to structural features of the organization or its environment. However, little is said about the role of emotion in these processes. This study addresses this gap by attending to the lived emotional experiences of street-level bureaucrats. It argues that emotion culture––rules guiding the experience and expression of emotion––can facilitate the reproduction of problematic or contradictory organizational practices. Using an ethnographic approach, this study investigates the case of SOSD, a non-profit organization involved in managing Singapore’s stray dog population as a public service. This study shows that the emotions of SOSD’s officers are crucial for actualizing animal welfare as a goal of public policy, but that the emotion culture embedded in SOSD’s style of consensus-building inadvertently perpetuated dysfunctional practices of population control. This illustrates that the transformation of emotion culture is a crucial prerequisite for resolving organizational dysfunctions.