In fulfillment of the requirements for

BA 251 Organizational Behavior

TTH 2:30 4:00 PM

A Film Clip
Analysis

Group 5
Aboganda, Bernadette C.
Castillo, Kim Edbonn C.
Gamayao, Joana P.
Instructor: Dr. Vivien T. Supangco

I.

Movie Synopsis

Riley Andersen, an 11 year old girl, lives with her parents in Minnesota, United States. As Riley
was born, five personifications of her basic emotions emerged - Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust,
and Anger. Her emotions influences her daily actions and decisions. Joy, Rileys chief emotion,
along with the other emotions control Riley through a console in her minds Headquarters. As
Riley grows up, her experience develop into memories which translates into colored orbs
respective of the emotion that controls her during the particular experience or situation. Amongst
Rileys memories are the significant ones called core memories, all of which are happy ones,
controlled by the emotion, Joy. Riley has 5 core memories that translates into Personality
Islands which are Family Island, Honesty Island, Hockey Island, Friendship Island and Goofball
Island. These personality islands defined Riley as a person.
Joy, the leader of the emotions, always tries to keep Riley happy. She is responsible in
maintaining Riley's cheerful childhood. However, Joy along with the other emotions do not
comprehend the purpose of Sadness. Joy keeps Sadness isolated and always tries to keep her
away from the console. As Riley and her parents move to San Francisco, Riley experiences
unpleasant changes in her life.
Meanwhile in Rileys headquarters, Sadness begins touching Riley's happy memories, turning
them sad. Joy tries to fend off Sadness by placing her in a circle so that wouldnt be able to
hurt Riley. However on Riley's first day at her new school, Sadness causes Riley to cry in front
of her class, creating a new core memory. However this core memory generated is blue, which
meant a sad core memory thatll define Rileys personality. As Joy sees the sad core memory,
she tries to dispose it. Sadness struggled against Joy and accidentally knocks the other core
memories that deactivated Rileys personality islands. Joy, Sadness, along with the core
memories are suddenly sucked out of Headquarters.
In Joys absence, Fear, Disgust, and Anger try to sustain Rileys happiness. The other emotions
struggled through Rileys daily actions, however this ended up with catastrophic results. Since
Riley has no core memories her personality islands began to collapse one by one. The
desperate and impulsive Anger inserts an idea into the console prompting Riley to run away.
This convinced Riley to return to Minnesota that will facilitate her to make new happy core
memories.
As Joy and Sadness journey throughout Rileys long term memory, they meet Bing Bong, Riley's
childhood imaginary friend. Bingbong aids them riding the train back to headquarters. However
since Riley falls asleep, the train stops and looked for other alternatives in going back to
headquarters. They find a recall tube but if Sadness goes as well, the core memories will turn
blue so Joy decides to return to headquarters without Sadness. However, as the last personality
island collapses, the recall tube that Joy is in breaks. This then drops Joy along with Bing Bong
into a Memory Dump where memories are forgotten forever.

At the bottom of the Memory Dump, Joy loses hope and discovers one of the sad memories of
one of Rileys hockey games. The memory became a happy one when Riley's parents and
friends cheered and comforted her. Joy realizes that Sadness serves a significant purpose
which is to create empathy and a sense of compassion in others when Riley is emotionally
overwhelmed and is in need of help. As Joy regains her optimistic self-escape the Memory
Dump, she and Bingbong uses an old wagon rocket. Since their weight combined is too heavy,
Bingbong sacrifices and remains in the Memory Dump so that Riley can be happy. Joy is now
able to reunite with Sadness and return back to Headquarters. Joy hands the control of the
console to Sadness. Sadness is the only emotion that is able to extract the idea which
returned the console back to normal. Riley removes the thought of running away from home.
As Sadness places the core memories of Riley back which then turns into sad memories. Riley
arrives home, she cries out to her parents how much she misses Minnesota. Her parents also
tell her how much they miss their old home. Joy and Sadness work the console together which
creates a new core memory, a combination of both happy and sad. The new core memory
translates into Rileys acceptance of her new life in San Francisco. Inside Headquarters, a new
expanded console arises, that enables Riley to lead a more emotionally complex life with her
emotions all working together hand in hand.
II.

Research Question

The point of view used in this paper is that Riley is the organization and her emotions are her
employees. These emotions work the console in Rileys headquarters where Joy is the leader or
chief emotion, her subordinates are Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness. With the following given
we shall answer the research question: Why did Riley behave poorly?
III.
1.
a.
b.
c.

Frameworks for Analysis

Managing Conflict and Negotiating {Chapter 13}

Metaphors of Conflict
Conflict Handling Style
Conflict Continuum

2. Perception Model of Communication {Chapter 14}

a. Communication Process in Actions
b. Aggressive Communication Style
3. Four Leadership Styles {Chapter 16}
4. Houses Revised Path Goal Theory {Chapter 16}
IV.

Analysis

1.

Managing Conflict and Negotiating

a.

Metaphors of Conflict

Conflict occurs when there is an opposition between parties, it is inevitable and may be viewed
in the following metaphors: a war where one must win at all costs, an opportunity where one

values creativity, growth and improvement, or a journey that involves constructiveness and
open-mindedness.
In the movie, the conflict is between the relationship of Joy and Sadness. Joy, Rileys chief
emotion, perceives Sadness as an unimportant emotion. She makes Riley feel bad or as how
Joy says it, Shes hurting Riley as she touches the memory orbs. Joy uses conflict as a war
where she shots down the idea of Sadness to get control of the console and the concept of
Riley being sad. She views Sadness as a negative emotion hence she tries to win at all costs as
she isolates Sadness into the circle where her job is to keep all the sadness inside. This
conflict disables Riley from feeling empathy, compassion and even self-reflection. The conflict
as a war also drove Sadness away making her believe that Riley is better without her and that
she only makes everything worse.
As the story progresses in the film, Joy views her conflict with Sadness as a journey. As Joy
views the sad memory orb, "Riley missed the winning shot. She felt awful. She wanted to quit.
This made Joy realize the importance of Sadness as an emotion. Sadness makes people feel
empathy where Joy is not the only emotion that can bring Riley happiness. The common ground
that Joy was able to find was a change of perception of Sadness where Sadness is as important
as the other emotions that can trigger even a deeper sense of happiness for Riley.
b.

Conflict Handling Style

Joy embraces her goal to make sure that

Riley is always happy. She shows a High
concern for herself and a Low concern for
others. Being that her persona is Joy, it is
instilled in her that she is the primary
foundation in making Riley happy hence she
uses a dominating conflict handling style
primarily throughout the movie.
c.

Conflict Continuum

In the movie, the conflict that arose from the perception of Joy to Sadness is too much conflict.
Joy was so closed-minded into believing that Sadness is unimportant and that she does nothing
but interferes in Rileys absolute happiness, this drove the two emotions to accidentally get
sucked out of Headquarters. This left Riley alone with the remaining emotions, Anger, Fear and
Disgust to control and influence her actions. The remaining emotions in Headquarters made
Riley unable to communicate effectively with her new classmates and with her parents at home.
Relationship between Conflict Intensity and Outcomes

2.
a.

Perception Model of Communication {Chapter 14}

The Communication Process

The Perceptual Model of Communication shows a description of the exchange of information

and understanding, senders and receivers can be individuals, groups, or organizations.
An example of the flow of communication in the Headquarters of Rileys mind is shown in the
figure below. Rileys emotions begins with the sender, in this case, Joy, where she encodes a
message using verbal (Sadness I have a super important job for you!) and non-verbal cues (by
drawing the circle) so that the message may be understood by the Sadness. In the figure below,
no noise or anything that interferes in the message is not present.
The medium is how the message is sent, Joy engages into a face-to-face conversation with
Sadness. Sadness, the receiver, decodes by translating the communication into a message.
Sadness understands the message of the receiver and gives a feedback by responding
unenthusiastically and disagreeing with Joy in staying in the circle. On the other hand, Sadness
cant express well what she thinks is the right thing to do. This resulted to conflict with Joy as
Joy cant understand Sadness.

b.

Aggressive Communication Style

Joy has an aggressive communication style amongst all the other emotions. Her character is
expressive and much more dominant compared to the other emotions. In the Headquarters, Joy
is the loudest emotion and often leans too close when other emotions take control. In the movie,
when Sadness tries to handle the console, Joy interferes immediately so that Sadness wont be
able to perform. Joy also exhibits a put-down on Sadness where she isolates her and frankly
tells her to do something else other than touch Rileys memories or control the console.

3.

Four Leadership Styles {Chapter 16}

Considering the dominating style of handling conflict showed by Joy as a de facto leader in the
Headquarters, it shows that she is the type of leader who exhibits low consideration and high
structure. She is an autocratic type of leader who controls the whole situation as she only sees
happy memories as the most important memory. She is the only one making the decision while
the other emotions are just following her. However at the end, she changed and starts to have a
high consideration for the opinion of others and makes the other emotions participate. She
recognized the importance that Riley should not only remember happy memories but also the
different memories as well.
4.

Houses Revised Path Goal Theory {Chapter 16}

Robert Houses Theory shows that behaviors of the leader should be acceptable when
employees view them as a source of satisfaction for them to accomplish their goal. Basically,
this framework integrates the aforementioned models were the dependent variable is the workunit performance (Rileys behavior in school and at home) while the independent variable were
Joys behavior as a leader, work group dynamics, and characteristics of Sadness and the other
emotions. As explained in the above mentioned frameworks, Joy exhibits a directive type of
leadership which exerts additional control over the activities of the other emotions. Looking at
5

the external factors, their tasks are interdependent and the emotions are using only one
console. This leadership style of Joy, however is not effective with the task structure and
characteristics of Sadness. Sadness is perceived to have high task ability and expertise of her
own. This led to Sadness dissatisfaction that is why Sadness disobeyed Joy by going out of the
circle and did what she thinks she need to do which is to touch the memories of Riley. This
scenario resulted to conflict in the Headquarters and affected their group performance. When
Sadness and Joy were not in the Headquarters, the other emotions lost their leader in Joy.
Disgust, Anger and Fear were not trained to be independent as Joy always decides what to do,
resulting to poor work-unit performance. When Joy realized the importance of Sadness, Joy
started to be a leader who is participative by giving the console to Sadness. Joy and Sadness
work the console together, creating a new core memory that combines their emotions; new
island forms representing Riley's acceptance of her new life in San Francisco.

IV.

Synthesis

The research question is addressed using Houses Revised Path-Goal Theory. The category of
Joys leadership behavior was identified. Subsequently, effectiveness of this category of
leadership behaviors in relation to other emotions (employees) characteristics and their working
environment, which thereon affect Rileys behavior.
In the movie, Rileys poor behavior can be traced down to Joys leadership behaviors. Among
the eight categories of leadership behaviors, her style is closest to the category of directive
path-goal clarifying leadership behaviors. Joy set the goal which is to make Riley happy. She
assigned herself and other emotions specific tasks to accomplish this goal.

The directive path goal clarifying behaviors displayed by Joy were not effective in relation to the
characteristics of other emotions and of their working environment. The emotions have internal
locus of control and have high specific task ability. They exactly know when to act. These
characteristics of other emotions need less additional directions thus would respond negatively
to directive leadership. Note that Anger, Fear and Disgust are highly opinionated. There is also
need for clarity as to Sadness role. In these aspects, directive leadership is acceptable.
However, Joy wasnt able to specifically identify and understand the role of the Sadness and so
she wasnt able to assign appropriate tasks for her. Joy has a low consideration for Sadness
because of her belief that Sadness makes Riley sad and what Sadness wanted to do is exactly
the opposite of what they wanted to achieve. This made Sadness feel frustrated and
dissatisfied. Sadness has low self-esteem, as she struggled to find value of her role towards
Rileys personality. In this case, Joys directive leadership over Sadness became ineffective.
With regards to their workplace, they established a single user console, where only one emotion
can use at a specific time. They also worked independently, thus each of them produced one
type of emotion for a memory at a given time. As the emotions have distinct and independent
roles but have to operate the console one at a time. This created frustration rather than
motivation with regards to the usage of the console, especially to Sadness who has unclear role
and was not given appropriate tasks to begin with. In this situation, Joy should have exercised
supportive leadership style rather than directive one.
As Joys directive path goal leadership behaviors were ineffective, this resulted to Rileys poor
performance.
Application of Houses Revised Path Goal Theory

This case showed the importance of a leader in an organization. It encourages managers to

become leaders that empower their employees as it increases motivation. Motivation in turn
increases performance. In the movie, Sadness was empowered by Joy when Joy hands the
control of the console to Sadness, Sadness then was able to successfully extract the idea,
reactivating the console. Sadness accomplished something by preventing Riley from going back
to her hometown and prompting Riley to return home. This case also suggests a participative
type of leadership which sees conflict as a journey. This makes conflict more tolerable which
could produce better outcomes for the organization. After resolving their conflict, Joy and all
other emotions were able to build stronger relationships with one another as they were able to
work together creating memories (output) that were a combination of different emotions. In the
end, Riley was able to lead a more emotionally complex life as her emotions were all working
together on a new expanded console with room for them all to operate. However, not all
organizations need a participative leadership. It is situational and it still depends on what fits
best relative to the leadership style of the manager, the employee characteristics and the
workplace environment.

Reference:
Kreitner and Kinicki (2010). Organizational Behavior. International Student Edition, 9. New York:
McGraw-Hill