From a managerial perspective, morale embodies the collective spirit and motivation of a group of employees. Other terms used to designate this concept include espirit and espirit de corps. In fact, espirit de corps was one of the first management principles identified by Henri Fayol in the early 1900s. Employee morale is how employees actually feel about themselves as workers, their work, their managers, their work environment, and their overall work life. It incorporates all the mental and emotional feelings, beliefs, and attitudes that individuals and groups hold regarding their job.

Consideration of employee morale and job satisfaction was a major emphasis of the behavioral school of management that started with the famous Hawthorne Experiments in the late 1930s. The behavioral school held that employee morale influences employee productivity. Theorists, such as Hertzberg, conducted research in the 1950s and 1960s indicating that employees' satisfaction and motivation were influenced...