Mamism: Anger-Based Communication, Organizational Ideology, and the Internalization of Workplace Anger Culture

Koichi Hiraoka

No 39eph_v1, MediArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This paper proposes the concept of Mamism as a theoretical framework for explaining how anger-based workplace communication becomes ideologically internalized as organizational common sense. Mamism is derived from Ma-Meme, meaning Multiple Anger Meme, and ism, indicating an ideological or value-based system. While Ma-Meme explains how anger-centered emotional memes are reproduced through psychological reward, rhetorical justification, and social imitation, Mamism explains how such anger memes become moralized, institutionalized, and internalized through workplace communication. Previous research on abusive supervision, workplace bullying, organizational silence, psychological safety, emotional contagion, organizational culture, institutional theory, ideology, and workplace communication has clarified how anger and hostile conduct harm individuals and organizations. However, these perspectives do not sufficiently explain why anger is sometimes interpreted not as emotional dysregulation or harassment, but as responsibility, seriousness, discipline, leadership, or loyalty to the organization. This paper addresses that gap by examining how organizational language, interactional patterns, evaluative norms, and communicative expectations transform anger from an emotional behavior into a moralized workplace ideology. The central argument is that Mamism emerges when anger is no longer merely used or imitated, but believed in. Under Mamism, anger becomes a communicative ideology. Anger is reinterpreted as instruction, intimidation as leadership, public correction as education, silence as discipline, and fear as productive tension. As a result, resistance to anger may be interpreted as weakness, immaturity, irresponsibility, or disruption of order. Mamism thereby produces organizational silence, reduces psychological safety, distorts emotional currency, legitimizes harassment, selects for anger-adaptive actors, and devalues non-anger-based communication. The paper argues that escaping Mamism requires more than emotional regulation training or anti-harassment education. Organizations must reduce the symbolic and practical value of anger within workplace communication, refuse to treat anger as evidence of competence or responsibility, and create conditions in which dialogue, explanation, repair, humor, psychological safety, and non-anger-based control are organizationally valued. The problem is not anger itself, but the communicative and ideological structure through which anger becomes believed in as organizational morality.

Date: 2026-06-15
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:mediar:39eph_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/39eph_v1

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