necessary evils - organizational behavior

Navigating the Bind of Necessary Evils: Psychological Engagement and the Production of Interpersonally Sensitive Behavior, Margolis, J. D. & Molinsky, A. (2008)

In this award winning paper, authors suggest that traditional view, workers of troublesome

tasks distance themselves from their own emotions, is totally wrong. They conducted a survey

including 111 individuals whose jobs require them to do ”necessary evils”, troublesome tasks.

Results show that most individuals in the study fit their emotions with the task even when

causing harm to other individuals.

The main problem with necessary evils is that they are unavoidable, like it or not they are

needed to finalize tasks. So we are looking for an answer in order to handle emotions brought

by necessary evils. Margolis and Molinsky suggest two approaches; disengagement and

engagement. Disengagement approaches protect the individual who is doing harm from

feeling the consequences of his/her action but he/she also engenders less sensitivity and

compassion for his/her victim. On the other hand engagement approach suggest individual to

feel the emotions of the victim and show some emphaty towords other parties. Disengagement

approach would protect some professionals (doctors, lawyers and so on) from painful or

harmful feelings and emotions. Most of the time we have to face to unpleasant tasks to achive

ultimate goal and to keep ourselves distant from negative feelings.

In this study, therea are two suprising results for me; first one is that veteran workers, with

five or more years experience, are more likely to be emotionally engaged than less

experienced workers. Second one is that results show that the 53 women in sample are

slightly more likely than the 58 men to become emotionally engaged, women doing so 57% of

the time when men doing 51% . The research gives some other surprising results and insight

information about necessary evils and importance of doing those sort of things.