Emotion regulation during organizational change: attending to lived experiences[La régulation émotionnelle en contexte de changement organisationnel : l'apport de l'attention aux expériences vécues]

Digital transformation of organizations represents a complex and uncertain organizational change, in which emotional stakes and emotion management processes are essential to understand. We position our work within the theoretical framework of emotion regulation in the context of change, aiming to identify the factors that explain its effectiveness. Drawing on a case study of the transformation of a large French industrial company, we analyze the emotion regulation efforts initiated within the organization, involving multiple groups of actors, and how these efforts are received by operational teams in light of their lived experiences of change. We identify two key factors influencing the effectiveness of emotion regulation, expressed in terms of distance between actors: the distance in interests—whether oriented toward change or continuity—and the distance from operational roles. The concept of Temporal-Occupational Distance emerges as a moderator of emotion regulation efforts in organizations, contributing to the distribution of roles among different actor groups within such initiatives.