ABSTRACT
Planning is an important organizational activity that creates the basic scaffolding that enables organizations to function. Performed by individuals and groups, planning is conducted for a wide variety of purposes such as business planning, marketing, risk mitigation, and project planning, among others. These efforts help individuals and organizations to identify and prioritize goals and key work activities, to assess the costs and benefits of these activities, and to obtain and coordinate the people and resources needed to do them (Mumford, Schultz, & Osburn, 2002). Broadly defined, planning is “the construction of future action sequences intended to direct action and optimize attainment of outcomes” (Mumford, Schultz, & Van Doorn, 2001, p. 214). Plans are more than to-do lists. They reflect the interplay of action sequences, time, resources, and contingencies, implying the need for cognitive activities as well as social processes related to communication, collaboration, and negotiation with co-workers, supervisors, and other groups or people. Taking these demands into account along with the research relating emotions to motivation, cognition, and social behavior, exploring the role of emotions in planning appears to be an important endeavor.
