Although Gross (1998) and others conceptualize emotion regulation exclusively as
a general tendency or style, we position IEM strategies similar to other organizationally
relevant constructs (e.g., regulatory focus, Johnson, Shull, & Wallace, 2011) that can be
measured at different levels such as event-specific, person-specific, and general style. In
developing this scale, we investigate IEM as a general tendency because according to
a study assessing the consistency of strategies across multiple events using behavioural
ratings (average ICC = .50, Little, Kluemper, Nelson, & Ward, 2010), IEM strategies are
somewhat stable within agents.