Leadership and Emotional Management in Science-Based Innovation Work

One of the most intriguing aspects of the predominant scientific ideology is the emphasis on emotional detachment from the object of study and from the results and findings produced. While other work is either explicitly based on the ability to perform what has been called emotional work (Hochschild, 1983), for instance various groups of service workers and professionals such as medical doctors or lawyers, or is regarded a human resource to be nourished and emphasized under the label of motivation, scientific work is in many respects portrayed as a social practice wherein too much emotionality is not of necessity a good thing for neither the process, nor the outcome. The tradition of modest witnessing, the ability to provide tempered and analytical accounts of what is observed, is clearly taking an argument against a too emotional relationship with the object of study. Underlying this disregard for emotionality is the long-standing Western tradition wherein ratio, human reason, is contrasted against the more fluid and ambiguous human affects. In the Cartesian tradition of thinking, mind and body remain separated and the emotional capacities are located in the body as opposed to the cognitive capacities of the mind.