PTThe emotions that go into managers’ decisions
Laying someone off, hiring, cutting costs: do managers decide with their head or their heart? The thesis talked to nine managers in Campo Grande, Brazil, and found emotion in the decisions they described, including the ones they called rational. The author concludes that emotion helps when managers learn to deal with it, which is why she proposes emotional education. Explained in 12 screens.
Deciding with reason alone also goes wrong
The research starts from Ashton-James and Ashkanasy’s (2008) model: emotion without reason leads to impulsive decisions; reason without emotion leads to cold decisions, without empathy. Move the slider and see what happens at each end:
Model from Figure 10 (section 3.2) and the case in Box 2 of the thesis. The slider and its three zones are our illustration; quotes are from the managers, with the thesis’s codes.
Nine managers told of difficult decisions
All of them make strategic decisions in private companies in Campo Grande, the city with the largest share of new businesses in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and all have seven or more years in management. Pick a breakdown:
The questions started from Paul Ekman’s five basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust) and the model on the previous screen. The author then transcribed each conversation by hand and followed Braun and Clarke’s six phases of thematic analysis. Tap each phase:
Boxes 4, 5 and 6 and section 3.2. To avoid identifying anyone, the figures reorder with each breakdown and do not follow the codes G1 to G9; gender appears only as a total. Grouping of positions and sectors is ours.
Of the five basic emotions, one did not come up
Before you look: which of these emotions did none of the nine managers mention?
Height = number of codes for each emotion in Box 7 (our count); quotes from section 4.1. Quotes about discrimination appear without a code, so as not to identify the speaker.
The conversations became seven themes and 24 subthemes
Each excerpt of the interviews got a code; codes were grouped into subthemes and themes. Each column is a theme, and each layer a subtheme, with thickness set by the number of codes. Tap a column:
Themes, subthemes and codes from Box 7; counts are ours (80 codes; "cultural context", with three sub-items, counts as one). The overall map (Figure 11) uses some different names; we follow the box. More codes does not mean a theme came up more often: the thesis does not count excerpts.
The decision that seemed purely rational also held emotion
Some managers said emotion does not interfere. The author would then ask one more question. Pick a conversation and go through it line by line:
Dialogues from sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.4, G7’s words from 4.2.2. Model stages from Ashton-James and Ashkanasy (2008), who say emotion shapes both the process and the content of a decision. Where a quote marked gender, we cut it with […]. Drawing is ours.
The managers described five ways to regulate emotions
What do you do when you have to decide while upset? Mark what you use and compare with your column, the last one in the grid:
Strategies from section 4.3; who appears in each is our count from the quotes there (the thesis does not count). The author says managers combine more than one practice; in that section, 4 of the 9 mention two or more, and G8 does not appear.
What shakes managers most was not in the model
The thesis’s model points to three kinds of event as the ones that most stir the emotions of decision-makers. The author asked the managers. Before you look: what do you think shakes them most?
Section 4.4 and Figure 10. All nine mentioned personal events, above all family ones; the model’s events "were mentioned", but with less weight (the thesis does not say by how many, so the blue boxes stay empty). The author did not add family to the model: she left it for research with more managers.
For the managers, fear leads to anxiety and sick leave
Throughout the conversations, one subject worried the managers: people falling ill at work. G4 summed up the chain: fear causes anxiety
. Tap each link:
Sections 4.1.4 and 4.5 and Box 7 (subthemes and codes). Chain drawn by us from the quotes. Prevalence figures from Casimiro and Laranjeiras (2022), cited in section 4.5.2; they are not data from this research.
In the accounts, conflict comes more from behaviour than from technical issues
Most of the conflicts here come from emotions; very few are about technical matters, they are much more about behaviour, about ego
(G1). The author grouped what the managers said into three subthemes: ego, conflict and generational change. Flip each card:
Quotes from section 4.6, with the thesis’s codes; card titles are ours. Where a quote marked gender, we cut it with […].
The thesis adds emotional education to the model
The managers pointed to emotional education as a way forward, and one recalled what nobody teaches: We don’t learn at school, or in life in general, to name and tell apart emotions and feelings
(G5). Hence the thesis’s central sentence: emotions contribute to the decisions of managers who are emotionally educated. Compare the two models:
Redrawing of Figures 10 and 15 of the thesis. Emotional education is a proposal: the research did not run or test a programme. The dashed family box is what the author left for future research.
Handling emotion is part of learning to decide
The managers care about their teams’ well-being but, in the author’s words, are still in a process of emotional learning. For her, emotional education is a form of prevention.
For managers
- Name what you feel before deciding: breathe, wait and only then reflect, as G5 described.
- Seek balance with practices that work for you (exercise, therapy, meditation, conversation).
For companies
- Emotional education programmes designed around managers’ routines, according to the author.
- Pay close attention to illness and addiction, discrimination by age, gender and race, and how generations work together.
For schools and courses
- The author argues for emotional education from the first years of school.
- And also in undergraduate Business Administration, where future managers are trained.
What this research does not say
- Other cities and more managers. The research stayed in Campo Grande and heard nine people. · according to the author
- Whether emotional education works. The thesis proposes programmes but did not run or evaluate any. · our observation
- How the decisions actually went. Everything comes from the managers’ own accounts, not from observing decisions or teams. · our observation
- How many said each thing. Apart from family (nine of nine), the thesis does not count quotes by theme; counts here are ours. · our observation
- A similar group. Four of the nine work in education; the author, also a manager, says the research changed how she decides. · our observation
Credits
CURVO, Luciana Auxiliadora Guimarães Fonseca. Educação emocional e tomada de decisão: estudo das emoções vivenciadas pelos gestores de empresas do setor privado. Doctoral thesis (Business Administration) · Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, São Paulo, 2025. Advisor: Prof. Dr. Almir Martins Vieira.
Supported by CAPES, Brazil’s graduate education agency. The author transcribed the interviews by hand and checked them with the Transkriptor app. Managers appear only by the thesis’s codes (G1 to G9), without anyone’s position, sector or gender. This version simplifies the work for a general audience.