Showing papers on "Emotional labor published in 1997"

Managing emotions in the workplace.

Abstract: Over the past ten years, increasing attention has been given to how workers express emotions in a variety of work settings (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1995; Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987, 1989; Sutton, 1991; Wharton and Erickson, 1993). An underresearched, yet critical, aspect of the literature on emotions in organizational life concerns employers' attempts to control and direct how employees display emotions to customers. Emotional labor, generally defined as the act of expressing organizationally-desired emotions during service transactions (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Hochschild, 1983), is the central focus of this study. This article seeks to extend previous theoretical and empirical research on emotional labor in four ways. First, a more rigorous conceptualization of emotional labor is presented. By drawing on previous emotional labor studies, psychological and anthropological research on emotions, and impression management studies, a three-component conceptualization of emotional labor will be advanced. The framework presented here suggests that emotional labor can best be described in terms of frequency of emotional labor, duration of emotional labor, and emotional dissonance experienced as a result of having to express emotions one may not actually feel. The second objective is to identify the organizational and job characteristics which might predict emotional labor. Previous researchers (Adelmann, 1989; Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Hochschild, 1983; Wharton, 1993) have suggested, but rarely tested, variables which may help to predict which work roles will require regulation of emotional expression and what conditions might influence employees' willingness and ability to express sanctioned emotions. The third objective is to explore the consequences of performing emotional labor on employees' well-being. Previous research has implicitly or explicitly concluded that emotional labor has negative and dysfunctional consequences for workers (Adelmann, 1989; Erickson, 1991; Hochschild, 1983). This study suggests the possibility that under certain conditions, performing emotional labor actually leads to favorable attitudinal and role behavior outcomes. Finally, the article examines the implications of this research for more effective management of emotions during service transactions. The rapid and significant increase in the number of jobs which require regulated displays of emotion, as well as the potential impact of emotional displays on service quality and customer satisfaction, certainly makes this issue one worthy of additional attention. THEORY Conceptualization of Emotional Labor According to Hochschild (1983), jobs involving regulated displays of emotion possess three characteristics: (1) they entail voice or facial contact with the public; (2) they require the worker to produce an emotional state or reaction in the customer; and (3) they provide the employer an opportunity to control the emotional activities of the employee. Displaying organizationally-sanctioned emotions to customers or clients has been argued to be a form of "labor" since it requires effort, planning, anticipation, and adjustment to situational factors in order to publicly display emotions that employees may not necessarily privately feel (James, 1989). Frequency of Interaction. A categorization of jobs requiring emotional labor provided by Hochschild (1983) established the foundation from which virtually every existing empirical study of emotional labor has since proceeded. The premise here is that external stakeholders (customers or clients) are more likely to comply with organizational goals when the affective bonds of liking, trust, and respect have been established through appropriate employee behavior. Thus, the more a work role requires contact with other people, the greater the organization's need to rely upon regulated displays of emotion to ensure compliance with organizational goals. …

Emotional labour in organizations

Abstract: Emotion and rationality are considered by many practitioners to be mutually exclusive concepts as encapsulated in the generally held belief that there is no place for emotions in today’s rational, task‐oriented work environments. Illustrates that emotions and their expression are, in fact, controlled and managed in organizations by a wide range of formal and informal means, ensuring that certain emotions are expressed while others are suppressed. Very often, employees are expected to conform to these expectations about emotional display even when they conflict with inner feeling. When this conflict results in individuals suppressing genuine emotion or expressing fake emotion, the work or effort involved in doing so is termed “emotional labour”. Demonstrates how emotional labour, which can have both functional and dysfunctional consequences for the individual and their organizations, is not restricted to interactions at the customer‐organization interface, but is becoming increasingly prevalent within all organizational communications.

Essential emotions: The place of passion in a feminist network

Abstract: Using a case study, the authors argue that emotions play a highly significant part in voluntary organizations, and that present significant part in voluntary organizations, and that present academic approaches to emotions are unhelpful, both theoretically and practically. The distinction between emotional work and emotional labor is unclear in nonprofit organizations using volunteers. More research is needed in this area.

Love the work, hate the system : a qualitative study of emotionality, organisational culture and masculinity within an interactive service workplace

Abstract: This is a qualitative study of emotionality, organisational culture and masculinity within an interactive workplace. The workplace under scrutiny is the Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS), a public sector organisation that provides both conventional and aerial pre-hospital emergency care and transport to all persons living in the Australian state of Queensland. The works of Hochschild, and the burgeoning studies of organisational emotionality provide a framework which illuminates the links between the practice of emotional labour and the privileging of particular kinds of emotionality within the QAS. The findings are based on observational and interview data collected over a period of fifteen months. During this time, five hundred hours was spent in the field observing one hundred and ten cases. Thirty indepth interviews were held with officers from the seven QAS regions. This study illustrates that emotional labour needs to be studied in the context of the emotional culture in which it is practiced. This approach to the study of emotional labour has made transparent the crucial role intra-gender relations play in the constitution and reproduction of organisational emotionality within the QAS. The existence of frontstage and back stage masculinities is illustrative of how emotional culture is constructed and maintained through gendered organising processes.

The emotional labour of academics : the rational and the relational

Abstract: Q methodology and unstructured interviews were used to develop a thick description and typology of academics' views of emotional labour. An archetypal factor described an ideal of emotional labour. After it was rotated, a three-factor, polythetic typology emerged, confirmed by content analysis of the interviews. Factors A, B, and C represented "rational," "relational," and "reflective" orientations respectively. Academics who load on Factor A--i.e., hold the "rational" view--are task-oriented, energetic, comfortable with their authority, and seek opportunities to share their enthusiasm for their subjects. They are inner-directed; their primary audience is the internalized "generalized other." Faculty who load on B are "relational": student-oriented, conscious users of emotions, who deliberately involve their feelings in their teaching and student relations. They project an approachability they feel to be central to their praxis and personalities. C represents the approach of "reflective" academics who have blended the rational and the relational, and have a critical perspective on their profession. They acquiesce in institutional demands that faculty form close relationships with students, without feeling inauthenticity. Thirteen Q sorts loaded on two factors, raising questions about the evolution and stability of the types, the meaning of a dual type, and the phenomenological implications. A secondary purpose of the study was to explore the effect of their emotional labour on women academics' career outcomes. The literature suggested that women's experiences would predispose them to perform emotional labour in a different way and to a higher degree than male counterparts. It was anticipated that this would cause gender differences in factor loadings. These proved less marked than expected. More men than women loaded on A; almost twice as many women as men dual-loaded; twice as many women dual-loaded as loaded on any single factor. The gender difference on A approached significance (I = .05). For both sexes, more academics loaded on A than B, and B than C. The idea that institutions control women through demands for emotional labour received anecdotal confirmation. Further work will benefit from development of a metric for emotional labour and application of act frequency methodology.

Job r esponsibility, p ay a nd p romotion*

Abstract: How are pay and promotion prospects related to job responsibility? A job entails responsibility to the extent that the value of the job outcome is sensitive to the worker’s input of eort. In my model, an employer uses termination contracts to elicit eort from workers. The optimal wage increases with responsibility. I show that the employer can reduce incentive costs by structuring a job ladder and oering workers a self-enforcing prospect of promotion. In fact, the employers will choose to pay dierentiated wages to identical workers in identical jobs, promoting, workers from the lower-paying to the higher-paying positions as vacancies occur. i. responsible j obs A responsible job is one in which the value of job outcomes is highly sensitive to the input of worker eort. The responsible worker is not closely monitored during the production process, but the outcome of his work is evaluated after the fact, and credit or blame is assigned at that time. The degree of responsibility may be measured by the variation in the value of job outcomes over the feasible range of worker eort. This variation is quite dierent from a worker’s marginal product. As with ship captains and civil engineers, the magnitude of losses caused by a single failure of a responsible worker may, in the extreme, be many times his expected lifetime marginal product or income. Some responsible jobs are held by highly skilled professionals; others are held by relatively unskilled workers. Business executives have responsible jobs: their strenuous eorts can bring substantial profits, their lapses can drive a prosperous firm into bankruptcy. Brain surgeons, bus drivers and firemen all have responsible jobs, because their failures can lead to very high costs, including loss of life. Many factory workers, such as equipment maintenance technicians, machine operators, dispatch personnel, among others, also have responsible jobs. The level of responsibility is not necessarily reflected in the tasks that a worker must perform. Consider, for example, two dierent jobs, each associated with the following task: the worker in each job must watch a control panel. If a red light comes on, the worker must throw a switch. That’s all. What diers in the two jobs is not the tasks but the consequences of failure. In the first case, let us suppose, the job is in a nuclear facility: failure will result in a nuclear meltdown. In the second case, the job is in a fast-food restaurant: failure will result in a dozen burnt hamburgers. An important implication of this paper is that despite the workers’ identical qualifications and identical assigned tasks, it makes sense to pay the first worker a lot more than the second is paid. We shall try to understand how much more and why. * This paper is dedicated to Evsey D. Domar, with the devotion, admiration and respect that a student has for his life-long teacher. I would like to thank Kai-Uwe Ku$ hn, Jo! zsef Sa! kovics, and Sandro Brusco for their indispensable assistance, as well as Ching-to Albert Ma, Christopher Ruhm, Martin Weitzman, and two referees for their help with an earlier version of this paper. This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Education.