Author Identifier (ORCID)
Cathrine Frost: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5227-1637
Andrei Lux: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3454-946X
Peter Galvin: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-8056
Abstract
Affective Events Theory explains how workplace emotions arise from discrete events and shape attitudes and behaviour. Drawing on a phenomenological study of 29 employees and 13 managers working within oversight saturated supervisory contexts in the post–Royal Commission Australian financial services sector, this paper extends Affective Events Theory by examining how affective experience unfolds when accountability is continuous, and discretion is constrained. Across dual-cohort findings, affect was not primarily anchored to identifiable events that resolved over time. Instead, participants described emotion as persistent and cumulative, produced through ambiguity and emotional restraint, and circulating across supervisory roles. Employees reported sustained interpretive effort directed towards reading tone, silence, and procedural communication, while managers described regulating emotional expression to remain defensible under accountability pressures. These findings specify boundary conditions for the episodic logic of Affective Events Theory, by explaining how affect may be conceived as a sustained condition in contexts with sustained oversight, with meaningful implications for workplace attitudes and behaviours and for managerial practice in highly regulated organisational environments where accountability and supervision are continuous.
Keywords
Affective Events Theory, workplace emotion, supervision, interpretive labour, emotional restraint, accountability, qualitative research
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
2026
Publication Title
Journal of Management & Organization
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
School
School of Business and Law
RAS ID
94312
Funders
Australian Government Research Training Program
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
Frost, C., Lux, A. A., & Galvin, P. (2026). When affect is not episodic: Extending Affective Events Theory under sustained oversight. Journal of Management & Organization. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2026.10101