Showing papers on "Emotional labor published in 1996"

The Dimensions, Antecedents, and Consequences of Emotional Labor

Abstract: This article conceptualizes the emotional labor construct in terms of four dimensions: frequency of appropriate emotional display, attentiveness to required display rules, variety of emotions to be displayed, and emotional dissonance generated by having to express organizationally desired emotions not genuinely felt. Through this framework, the article then presents a series of propositions about the organizational-, job-, and individual-level characteristics that are antecedents of each of these four dimensions. Frequency of emotional display, attentiveness to display rules, variety of emotions to be displayed, and emotional dissonance are hypothesized to lead to greater emotional exhaustion, but only emotional dissonance is hypothesized to lead to lower job satisfaction. Implications for future theory development and empirical research on emotional labor are discussed as well.

Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms

Abstract: Law Firms. Professor Pierce’s covert/ethnographic, overt/interview study of two Bay-area law firms shows that law firms are internally stratified. Men are at the top (with a small set of women) and, in 1989, earned an average of one quarter of a million dollars annually (before profit sharing); women are at the low middle (personnel workers, librarians) and bottom (legal secretaries, word processors, receptionists, case clerks, duplicating operators). The average salary for secretaries that year was $29,000, while paralegals earned an average of $30,000. In the large private firm Pierce studied, the attorney stratum (48 partners, 102 associates) was 99 percent white and 88 percent male; in the second site, the legal department of a large corporation (36 senior counsel, 114 associates), the attorney stratum was 95 percent white and 80 percent male. Focusing on both firms’ litigation units (as opposed to other types of law), Pierce shows that law firms are gendered hierarchies because the work performed in them is gendered, particularly with regard to emotion work. That is, men at the top perform the male-stereotyped emotional work of aggression, winning at all costs, humiliating the other, intimidating, wooing, strategic flattering, and marshaling all conceivable emotional resources in the name of being a successful adversary. The emotional work demanded of the overwhelming majority of female employees complements that of the men. The women use intuition to anticipate people’s needs. They reassure everyone (particularly the lawyers); they support and maintain the emotional stability of the lawyers through deferential treatment and caretaking; they affirm the status of everyone “above” them. Their job is to be pleasant and to work effectively with difficult people. Thus, instead of liberating men and women from sex-role stereotypes, high-powered law firms have had the opposite effect. While men in these law firms have sustained or even revived the atavistic “Rambo model” of masculinity, the women have sustained the model

Doing ‘Emotional Labour’ in the Education Market Place: stories from the field of women in management

Abstract: (1996). Doing ‘Emotional Labour’ in the Education Market Place: stories from the field of women in management. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education: Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 337-349.

The Marital Construction of Gender Through Work and Family Decisions: A Qualitative Analysis

Abstract: In examining factors relating to how married couples make work and family decisions, we discovered that gender and marriages are constructed and, in turn, reconstructed through the decisions couples make about work and family. We qualitatively analyzed longitudinal data gathered from 61 couples who made a work and family decision. Husbands and wives provided information concerning their marriages in general and their work and family decision-making process in particular. We took a feminist critical stance on what couples considered as they faced the decision, and how their considerations were related to aspects of their relationship. The focus of this article is to illuminate how married couples construct gender and their marriages through their decisions concerning work and family. Building on decision-making research and feminist critiques of marital roles, we scrutinize work and family decisions. We show how interpersonal processes--those underlying and emergent patterns of interaction in intimate relationships--are experienced in ways that reflect the couples' construction of gender in their interpersonal lives and how that construction impacts the process of decision making. Through qualitative analysis, we illuminate how important the couples' own construction of gender and their marriages is in explaining the decisions they make and the ways those decisions change or cement their ideas about gender and about marriage. Thus, this research is aimed at providing a more complete understanding of why couples make the decisions they do regarding work and family. How is it that couples continue to make decisions that, from an economic standpoint, simultaneously disadvantage women and overburden men? The answer to this question points to how decisions that couples make about work and family perpetuate patriarchy. REVIEW OF LITERATURE The Gender Perspective and Construction of Marriage The gender perspective sees gender as produced in everyday activities (Ferree, 1990; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Rather than describing gender as an individual property based on biology, the gender perspective focuses on how people in their interactions with others come to perceive each other and each other's behaviors as gender appropriate or inappropriate. Stemming from symbolic interaction theory, the gender perspective views interactants as striving to create meaning out of their behaviors and the behaviors of others. Through this active process of deriving meaning from interaction, the behaviors of men and women are seen as diametrically different (West & Zimmerman, 1987). Particularly important for the study of married couples making decisions, gender is socially constructed and embedded in social contexts and processes through a system of boundaries that help to define what is appropriate for each gender, and through self-concepts, beliefs, and expectations for behavior (Potuchek, 1992; Risman & Schwartz, 1989; Thompson, 1993). Seen in this light, the ways that couples make work and family decisions and the outcomes of those decisions have implications for how gender and marriages are constructed for individual couples and for the larger society. Rather than surmising that married women are forced into unrewarding jobs and are constrained by their family obligations, the gender perspective suggests a deeper look into the processes through which couples make the decisions that result in women's economic marginalization and women's "second shift" in the household (Hochschild, 1989). What sorts of marital behaviors are gendered? In terms of responsibility, we know that men typically have responsibility for bread winning; women typically bear responsibility for home care, including housework, dependent care, and attentive care and emotional labor (Hood, 1983; Thompson, 1993). From a gender perspective, Potuchek (1992) suggests that these responsibilities are not passively stepped into by spouses; rather, role taking and role making are negotiated and renegotiated throughout marital interaction as an "active and contentious" process of constructing gender boundaries (p. …

Labouring the emotions: expanding the remit of nursing work?

Abstract: Emotional labour has been an important topic of debate in nursing because of its perceived importance to those involved in the delivery of health care and to those patients who receive that care The purpose of this paper is to consider what, if anything, this discussion has contributed to the sociological analysis of health care A number of contributions to that analysis emerge First, the discussion has revealed that emotional labour is a sizeable component of health care work which makes considerable demands on those delivering health care Second, emotional labour has consequences for the position of women, for nurses and for patients, in the health care workplace and in wider society Finally, the discussion on emotional labour has revealed a tension between the generally accepted theoretical move towards holism in health care and the practical reality of applying holistic health care in a society which continues to hold the scientific/biomedical paradigm in high regard

The impact of emotional dissonance on psychological well‐being: the importance of role internalisation as a mediating variable

Abstract: Over the last ten years, increasing attention has been given to employees' displays of emotions to customers during service transactions and particularly to how organisations try to control these emotional displays (Adelmann, 1989; Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987, 1989; Wharton & Erickson, 1993). The act of expressing organisationally‐desired emotions during service interactions has been labelled emotional labour (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Hochschild, 1983). The issue in emotional labour research which has received the most focus has been “emotional dissonance”, that is, the state of discomfort generated in employees when they have to express emotions which they do not genuinely feel (Middleton, 1989). In large part, this attention to emotional dissonance has been based on the potential negative consequences that emotional dissonance can have for workers psychological well being (Hochschild, 1983; Erickson, 1991; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987; Wharton, 1993). This study seeks...

Making People Feel Good: Workers' Constructions of Meaning in Interactive Service Jobs

Abstract: This paper analyses the experiences of women who work in residential real estate sales, to identify the factors that lead women to choose and keep this occupation In-depth interviews provide the data for a case study of the importance of various job traits in determining job satisfaction for a specific category of workers The more general question concerns workers' constructions of the emotional labor involved in interactive service work Within a general queueing model, this paper focuses on job queues Specifically, I examine workers' preferences for jobs and the factors that contribute to positive ranking of the job after workers' initial experiences with it Findings show that although the women's experiences on the job have disappointed their expectations, most remain satisfied with their work and plan to stay in the field The reasons for this high level of satisfaction are related to characteristics of the workers—the women's educational and skill levels, and the limited alternatives that they perceive for themselves, and characteristics of the job—its autonomous nature and the emotional labor it entails

Emotional Labour and Qualitative Research: How I Learned Not to Laugh or Cry in the Field

Abstract: This chapter explores the difficulties encountered when attempting to use feminist methodologies in predominately male organisational environments. It explores issues of power in research relationships and the development of rapport in ethnographic research. A central concern of this essay is the emotional impact that research has on the researcher. It is argued that the management of emotions necessary for the feminist researcher in an all-male environment may create distorted field relationships and may be too high a price to pay to illustrate the patriarchal culture of academia.

Professions, Information Technology and Management in Hospitals

Abstract: The social "shaping" of healthcare computing computers, management strategies and the state computer specialists, "hybrids" and information management medical computing and professional autonomy nurses and computers - technical rationality and emotional labour hospitals, IT and new organizational forms profession, IT and hospital management.

Role transition and emotional labour: Understanding the impact of a nursing development unit on staff and on the therapeutic milieu

Abstract: This paper explores the impact of a nursing development unit (NDU) upon the practitioners who work there. The ideas proposed are generated from research and evaluation undertaken in three different NDUs: critical care; care of the older person with mental health problems; and primary health care. A model is proposed which seeks to explain some of the more complex issues encountered by practitioners who rise to the challenge of being in an NDU. By exploring the process this initiates through the conceptual lens of role transition' and 'emotional labour', it is hoped to illuminate critical issues for consideration when managing the pace of change and when evaluating the outcome of the initiative.

Emotional labour of nurses.

Abstract: In the development of nursing as a profession there is a need for nurses to discuss the strategies they use to meet the emotional demands of the nurse-patient relationship. These demands have changed over time. Hochschild’s definition of emotional labour is used as a means to understand the content of nurses’ emotional work. It is important that positive and supportive ward atmospheres are experienced by beginning nurse practitioners while they learn to cope with the emotional work involved in nursing. Emotional labour continues to be a very challenging aspect of nursing practice.

Staff role transition and emotional labour in NDUs.

Abstract: This paper explores the impact of nursing development units on the practitioners who work there. The ideas proposed are generated from research and evaluation is undertaken in three different NDUs. Critical care, care of the older person with mental health problems and primary health care are explored. A model is proposed which seeks to explain some of the more complex issues encountered by practitioners who rise to the challenge of being in an NDU. By exploring the process this initiates through the ideas of role transition and emotional labour, it is hoped to illuminate critical issues to consider when managing the pace of change and when evaluating the outcome of the initiative.

Review: Role transition and emotional labour: Understanding the impact of a nursing development unit on staff and on the therapeutic milieu

Abstract: _ of occupational suicide in which a nursing elite examines its emotional development while thc rcst of the health world concentrates on funding, rationing and multi-skilling. Essentially, this is a process-based paper about the management of change within the ’therapeutic milieu’ of NDUS. Informed by observation drawn from cvaluations of three BTDUs the author uses the ’conceptual lens’ of role transition and emotional labour to account for the emotional impact of change in NDUS. Defining these complex terms, identifying the multiplc issues and modelling a process of dynamic review inevitably restricts opportunitics to expand on methods and evidence, and even making reference to the extensi~-c literature on managemcnt of changc has proved problematic. This limitation of length, far from being unique to this paper, has an influence