Showing papers on "Emotional labor published in 2007"

Verbal abuse from outsiders versus insiders: comparing frequency, impact on emotional exhaustion, and the role of emotional labor.

Abstract: Research on aggression from organizational outsiders (customers, clients or patients) has ignored insider-instigated aggression, and has been limited to employees in emotional labor jobs (e.g., social work and customer services). The authors argue that customer-employee interactions have distinct characteristics from organizational insider interactions, and provide two studies to compare the frequency and strain of verbal abuse from customers, supervisors and coworkers. Furthermore, they assess whether customer verbal abuse is only a critical issue for employees in jobs requiring emotional labor, measured with both O*NET job codes and self-reported display rules. With a national random sample of U.S. employees (n = 2446) and a convenience sample of U.S. employees who have customer contact (n = 121), the authors find that verbal abuse from outsiders (1) occurs more frequently than insider verbal abuse, particularly for those with higher emotional labor requirements, and (2) predicts emotional exhaustion over and above insider verbal abuse, regardless of emotional labor requirements. The authors conclude that better integration of customer aggression and insider aggression research is needed. Language: en

Service with a smile: do emotional intelligence, gender, and autonomy moderate the emotional labor process?

Abstract: This survey study of 176 participants from eight customer service organizations investigated how individual factors moderate the impact of emotional labor strategies on employee well-being. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that gender and autonomy were significant moderators of the relationships between emotional labor strategies and the personal outcomes of emotional exhaustion, affective well-being, and job satisfaction. Females were more likely to experience negative consequences when engaging in surface acting. Autonomy served to alleviate negative outcomes for individuals who used emotional labor strategies often. Contrary to our hypotheses, emotional intelligence did not moderate the relationship between the emotional labor strategies and personal outcomes. Results demonstrated how the emotional labor process can influence employee well-being.

Employee experience of aesthetic labour in retail and hospitality

Abstract: Interactive service job growth in the UK is significant.Analysis of labour within these services has tended to focus on employee attitudes, framed through emotional labour. Such analysis is not incorrect, just partial. Some employers also demand aesthetic labour, or employees with particular embodied capacities and attributes that appeal to the senses of customers. Reporting survey and focus group data, this article explores aesthetic labour as it is experienced by interactive service employees in the retail and hospitality industries. Issues examined are recruitment and selection; image and appearance; uniforms and dress codes; skills and training. By extending awareness of aesthetic labour so that both employee attitude and appearance are empirically and conceptually revealed, the article extends understanding of the job demands made of employees in interactive services.

Transnational families and the provision of moral and emotional support: the relationship between truth and distance

Abstract: This article is an ethnographic analysis of transnational family links between adult migrant children living in Australia and their kin in Italy, from the 1950s to the present. A key focus of the article is the persistence of bonds of emotion across distance. Drawing on Finch and Mason's research on caregiving relationships and Hochschild's work on emotional labour, it explores both the positive experiences as well as the tensions associated with the transnational exchange of moral and emotional support. The findings confirm the perseverance of bonds of emotion across distance and thus challenge arguments about the declining bonds within translocal families as a result of globalising processes. The role that new communication technologies play in sustaining these bonds is offered as a possible explanation to account for the apparent increase in the frequency of transnational emotional interaction over time. The article also calls for further work on the influence of physical co-presence or absence on emot...

Emotional labour and emotional exhaustion: Interpersonal and intrapersonal mechanisms

Abstract: In some occupations, particularly in the service sector, dealing with patients or clients may require an employee to pretend to have emotions that they do not really have, or to actually experience required emotions. The regulation of emotion can be either automatic or controlled. This study extends research on the consequences and processes of emotional labour in two ways. First, it examines how the use of different emotion regulation strategies with patients relates to doctors’ emotional exhaustion. Second, it tests two mechanisms that may explain those relationships. A survey of 345 general practitioners (GPs) working in a large urban community in Spain was conducted for the study. Based on Cote's (2005) social interaction model, GP satisfaction with the responses of their patients was tested as a potential interpersonal mediator between their use of automatic, surface, and deep emotion regulation strategies and their emotional exhaustion. Psychological effort was tested as a potential intrape...

Open-ended interviews, power, and emotional labor

Abstract: This article investigates the power dynamics of the interview process and the connected emotional labor, drawing on examples from a recent study on workplace grievances in which most data collection was through open-ended interviews. By exploring the shifts of power and the emotional labor demands in the qualitative, open-ended interview, this article emphasizes that power shifts and emotions within the interview are, themselves, important data. A greater awareness of shifts in interviewer and interviewee power and emotional labor in the interview context helps the researcher better understand the nuances of the data, provides the researcher with more information about the interviewee and the research topic, and facilitates greater insights into the interview process, the participants, and the nature of the topics discussed.

“Let Me Tell You About My Job”: Exploring the Terrain of Emotion in the Workplace

Abstract: Because of the rapid growth in literature on emotion and communication in organizations and the many disciplinary homes of this work, scholars use many conceptualizations of emotion in the workplace. In this article, the authors map the terrain of emotion and communication in the workplace. They first review extant literature and argue for five types of organizational emotion: emotional labor (inauthentic emotion in interaction with customers and clients), emotional work (authentic emotion in interaction customers and clients), emotion with work (emotion stemming from interaction with coworkers), emotion at work (emotion from nonwork sources experienced in the work-place), and emotion toward work (emotions in which work is the target of the feeling). They then explore these types of emotion through an analysis of workplace narratives from the books Working (Terkel, 1972) and Gig (Bowe, Bowe, & Streeter, 2000). Themes that characterize workplace emotion are considered, and directions for future research ar...

Emotional Labour in Action: Navigating Multiple Involvements in the Beauty Salon

Abstract: Building on Hochschild's path-breaking analysis of service providers' `emotional labour', this article demonstrates some of the interactional skills required for emotional labour to be performed. Using conversation analysis (CA), we examine a single case from a database of recorded beauty salon interactions. The episode was chosen because it makes visible the mechanics of how a beauty therapist manages conflict between her `multiple involvements' in the salon: between her simultaneous engagement in topic talk and hair removal. We show first how she navigates this conflict and then how her actions may be understood as an example of emotional labour. The article addresses, then, both the feminist concern with making visible the skills of emotional labour and the conversation analytic concern with how participants manage multiple involvements in a socially meaningful way.

Emotions that build networks: geographies of human rights movements in argentina and beyond

Abstract: Social movement activists perform emotional labour that helps create and mobilise networks of collective action. The emotions of activism often contribute to social movements’ different organisational geographies. Two grassroots networks of human rights activists that originated in Argentina (the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and HIJOS) developed different emotional geographies over time. Both human rights movements were formed by relatives of victims of past human rights abuses and operated throughout Latin America and beyond. The movements incorporated activists and supporters who were linked by shared emotional bonds and by a common interpretation of the emotions of their activism. Activists in the two networks strategically deployed and framed the emotions of their activism in order to sustain it and to enhance possibilities for building broader networks of collective action. The comparison of these two human rights activist groups demonstrates that social movements’ organisational and geographic trajectories are often related to activists’ shared emotional connections and to the emotional labour that they perform through their networks.

Main and moderating effects of self-control, organizational justice, and emotional labour on counterproductive behaviour at work

Abstract: What are the antecedents of counterproductive behaviour (CB) at work? Previous research identified both trait and perceived situational variables such as dispositional self-control and organizational justice. In this article, the focus is on employees' perceived job demands. More specifically, the relation between emotional labour (surface and deep acting) and CB is examined. An online study with service providers from different lines of business (N = 559) confirmed that, while controlling for dispositional self-control and organizational injustice, both surface and deep acting in customer interactions were related to CB at work. Whereas the most influential variable was dispositional self-control, the findings confirm that people's perceived job demands contribute to deviant behaviour at work. Practical implications for job design are discussed.

Self-control demands, cognitive control deficits, and burnout

Abstract: Self-control involves inhibiting undesired behaviours and emotions, and it can be particularly relevant in the service sectors. Recent theoretical developments in cognitive and social psychology suggest that the demands on an individual of exercising self-control have an effect as a source of stress at work. In turn, burnout could be associated with being unable to meet those demands. It was expected that cognitive control deficits, as assessed by a questionnaire measure of self-reported failures in perception, memory, and action, would function as a vulnerability factor in the relationship between self-control demands and indicators of job strain. Data from 630 staff members of a German municipal administration revealed significant main effects of both self-control demands and cognitive control deficits on the burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Both predictors were positively related to burnout. In addition, the results provided clear evidence of the vulnerability ...

Emotional Governance: Politics, Media and Terror

Abstract: Introduction PART I: A DEMOCRACY OF FEELINGS Shaping the Public Mind The Rise of Therapeutic Culture Global Passions PART II: THE BIAS AGAINST HOPE Journalism as Emotional Labour Rottweilers Savage Democracy Challenging the Media Bias PART III: THE SEARCH FOR CONNECTION Politics as Emotional Labour Poor Emotional Governance PART IV: TERROR IN THE PUBLIC MIND The Four Factors of Fear Terrorism and the Emotional Public From Emotional Audit to Communication Strategy PART V: REPAIRING LEADERSHIP Market Failures Deferring to Reality

Too emotional to be capable? The changing nature of emotion work in definitions of ‘capable teaching’

Abstract: This article uses the concept of emotional labour to understand some of the changes that are ongoing in the teaching profession. While research has explored the impact of the new performance culture upon teachers’ work and identified a marginalisation of the caring and emotional aspects of teaching, the concept of emotional labour allows us to extend this argument. Using interviews with teachers who have had their capability questioned, in the majority of cases through the threat or implementation of capability procedures, this article draws upon newer conceptualisations of emotional labour to analyse some of the changes teachers are experiencing with the introduction of new accountability and performance systems. Utilising Bolton’s typology of different forms of emotion management in the workplace, we argue it is possible to recognise the distinctiveness of the emotion work carried out by teachers and identify why teachers’ emotion work is particularly vulnerable to the educational reforms associated wit...

A Job with No Boundaries Home Eldercare Work in Italy

Abstract: In recent years a number of important studies have explored the new international division of reproductive labor, but those works have concentrated, for the most part, on one end of the life cycle:...

Constructing Unemployed Job Seekers as Professional Workers: The Depoliticizing Work–Game of Job Searching

Abstract: Unemployed Americans overwhelmingly describe their predicament as an individual and private challenge, and not as a public issue with structural causes and political solutions. This case study utilizes participant observation and in-depth interviews at a support organization for unemployed white-collar workers to explore the concrete dynamics that render the structural and political dimensions of unemployment beyond discussion. Whereas the existing literature focuses on the role of ideology in shaping subjective understandings of unemployment, my ethnographic data indicate that the lived experience of job searching is critical to understanding why individualist ideologies resonate with unemployed job seekers. Engagement in the process of job searching is analyzed as a type of work that generates an absorbing “work–game.” Playing this game depoliticizes unemployment by channeling the players’ practical energies towards strategic decision-making and individual level maneuvers and away from larger structural contexts. The depoliticizing effects of the game endure even after job seekers cease to play. For job seekers who encounter obstacles to finding employment in the labor market and become discouraged, the process of playing the game generates the experience of being a loser, and thus reinforces individualized understandings of unemployment.

Helping Women and Protecting the Self: The Challenge of Emotional Labor in an Abortion Clinic

Abstract: One of the central problems in the performance of emotional labor at work revolves around how workers balance the needs of the job with those of the self. Drawing on data collected through participant observation and from in-depth, loosely structured interviews with nine clinic employees, this study analyzes how one group of abortion clinic workers negotiated the difficulties associated with emotional labor in ways that allowed them to achieve this balance. More specifically, we examine the interactive processes by which workers categorized patients into distinct types and developed specific strategies, along a continuum from investment to detachment, that enabled them to cope effectively with each type of patient. The implications of these strategies for understanding the connections between self, emotion, and authenticity are also discussed.

Metaphors at Work Maintaining the Salience of Gender in Self-Managing Teams

Abstract: Self-managing teams have been predicted to break down organizational hierarchies and sex-segregated functional divisions. Based on participant observation and interviews with 39 men and women in service-oriented self-managing teams, the authors found that the metaphor of family emerged in interviews as a popular way to describe teams' interaction and social relations. The ways that team members used the family metaphor revealed that women were often perceived in familial roles that the authors argue encourage emotional labor. Although relational tasks may not directly reproduce traditional gender power relations in teams, women can face difficulties taking on more instrumental team tasks. The authors propose that the persistence of family metaphors sustains the organizational gender categorization that self-managing teams as work-based, cross-functional groups were supposed to help eliminate. To the extent that this is the case, it suggests the importance of exploring the gendered organizational cultures ...

Contesting the dominance of emotional labour in professional nursing.

Abstract: Purpose – The main intension of this paper is to challenge the dominance of emotional labour in professional nursing.Design/methodology/approach – The article begins by evaluating the central conceptual and definitional aspects of emotional labour, emotion work and emotional work. The purpose of this discussion is to argue against the false public and private dichotomy that has plagued emotional labour and emotion work. Second, it is proposed that the central and helpful defining aspects of emotional labour and emotion work are Marx's concepts of exchange‐value and use‐value. These defining attributes are used in conjunction with other re‐conceptualisations, which unite these terms in order to create more encompassing constructs that are useful for focusing on the waged and unwaged aspects of professional nurses' emotional work response behaviours. Finally, the use of emotional labour in professional nursing is contested on the grounds that the construct has limited theoretical and empirical utility for r...

“There's No Place for Feeling Like This in the Workplace”: Women Teachers' Anger in School Settings

Abstract: Publisher Summary Emotional labor has specific implications for women teachers. Traditional gender expectations in the home as well as in the workforce require women to perform a substantially larger portion of emotional labor than men. This chapter argues that women are often portrayed in the society as possessing innate caring and nurturing qualities that draw on common sense assumptions of stereotyped characteristics of men and women. This contributes to the invisibility of this aspect of the teaching profession and the important skills and effort involved in the doing of emotional work. Teachers' moral purposes are inextricably intertwined with their descriptions of anger experiences. Teachers are clear in what they propose to achieve in their work, and many times express anger when they perceive that they are impeded from attaining their purposes. Obstacles can come from many directions—colleagues, administrators, parents, students, or society at large. This process of learning to navigate a system that is not always compatible with their own moral purposes and expectations is painful for many teachers. Caught in a double-bind, women weigh the pursuit of their moral purposes as teachers, while still keeping students' best interests at the center.

Gendering emotions in organizations

Abstract: Gender and Emotions: Introduction P.Lewis & R.Simpson Emotion Work as Human Connection: Gendered Emotion Codes in Teaching Primary Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties S.Bolton Women Executives: Managing Emotions at the Top A.Ross-Smith, M.Kornberger, A.Anandakumar & C.Chesterman Emotional Labour and Identity Work of Men in Caring Roles R.Simpson Emotion Work and Emotion Space in a Special Care Baby Unit P.Lewis Managing Emotional Spacetime: Gender, Emotions and Organizational Contexts G.L.Symonds HRM and Emotions: A Gender Perspective M.Hillos The Emotional Impact of Mistakes at Work: Gender Schemas and Emotion Norms P.Bryans & S.Mavin Love and Duty: Introducing Emotions into Family Firms S.Janjuha-Jivraj & L.Martin The Emotionality of Organization Violations: Gender Relations in Practice J.Hearn & W.Parkin Conclusion: Some Notes on Future Directions of Research P.Lewis & R.Simpson

Non-finite loss and emotional labour: family caregivers' experiences of living with motor neurone disease.

Abstract: Aim and objectives: This paper aims to add to nurses' knowledge concerning the challenges, losses and emotional labour family caregivers face when providing care for people living with motor neurone disease. Background: While previous caregiver research presents the salient losses such as social, financial and personal relationship loss among caregivers, the nonfinite, unpredictable losses faced every day by caregivers and the emotional labour experienced are not effectively represented and have not been explored for people living with neurodegenerative, life-limiting illnesses such as motor neurone disease. Design/Methods: Semi-structured interviews, ecomap diagrams of social support networks and observational field notes were all used to collect data for this ethnographic case study. Data were collected at three time points over a ten month period with eighteen primary caregivers and once during that period, with six peripheral caregivers. Results: Data revealed new information about the psychosocial and emotional losses experienced on a daily basis when living with motor neurone disease. The impact of the constancy of voluntary muscle degeneration and the uncertainty of the illness progression in terms of available time and functional loss, threatened people's understanding and expectations of life, their relationships, their personal identity and their future. Managing their relationship with the patient and their reactions to the devastation of motor neurone disease is consistent with the concept of emotional labour. Conclusions: Family caregivers living with MND experience nonfinite losses and emotional labour on a daily basis. While each individual's experience of loss is unique, nurses need to include caregivers as well as patients, in their spectrum of supportive care, providing an independent confidant to share the emotional labour and working with them to develop interventions to assist them to manage their losses and their changing needs for psychological and emotional support.