Emotional Labor

10 Key excerpts on "Emotional Labor"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  What Have We Learned?

  Ten Years on

  • Charmine E. J. Härtel, Neal M. Ashkanasy, Wilfred J. Zerbe, Neal M. Ashkanasy(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Essentially, they consider Emotional Labor to be a form of impression management. Further, Ashforth and Humphrey (1993) argue that not all emotions need to be ‘‘acted’’ and propose a third form of Emotional Labor: spontaneous and genuine emotion displays, which refer to the case where some expected emotions (e.g., empathy) can be naturally felt and appropriately expressed. Morris and Feldman (1996) , in their approach to Emotional Labor, focus more on work contexts (e.g., frequency of interactions and length, intensity, and variety of emotions) and define Emotional Labor as ‘‘the effort, planning, and control needed to express organizationally desired emotion during interpersonal transactions’’ (p. 978). They argue that Emotional Labor consist of four dimensions: frequency of appropriate emotional display, attentiveness to required display rules, variety of emotions to be displayed, and emotional dissonance. Morris and Feldman’s (1996) conceptualization of Emotional Labor is based on an interactionist perspective and attempts to reflect the interpersonal nature of Emotional Labor. However, the first three dimensions are typically regarded as the interaction characteristics of Emotional Labor but are not Emotional Labor itself ( Diefendorff et al., 2005 ). The last dimension, emotional dissonance, describes the divergence between felt and expressed emotions that is most likely to be an outcome of Emotional Labor rather than Emotional Labor itself ( Grandey, 2000 ; Brotheridge, 2006a ). Drawing upon emotion regulation theory ( Gross, 1998 ), Grandey (2000) defined Emotional Labor as ‘‘the process of regulating both feelings and expressions for the organizational goals’’ (p. 97) and proposed surface acting (managing observable expressions) and deep acting (managing feelings) as the working definition of Emotional Labor.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Managing Emotions in the Workplace

  • Neal M. Ashkanasy, Wilfred J. Zerbe, Charmine E. J. Hartel(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Hochschild added the term Emotional Labor to capture a very specific meaning associated with the management of emotions, namely being paid to manifest a specific emotional state as part of one’s job (Hochschild 1983). A review of the organizational literature addressing the sociology of emotions reveals the use of all three terms. However, there has been a distinct shift in how these terms are used in the organizational literature that “obscures the variability in work role emotional demands” (Wharton and Erickson 1993, 457–458). In other words, we manage our emotions in the workplace both to benefit ourselves and to benefit the organization. Furthermore, we are sometimes expressly required to manage our emotions as part of our job, and other times do so because it benefits us directly, making work more enjoyable, meaningful, or less stressful. While both actions occur in the workplace, they spring from different sets of demands and thus are important to differentiate in studies of emotion in organizations (Callahan 2000a; Lively 2000). In much of the recent literature, however, “Emotional Labor” has been used to describe both functions, thus obscuring the distinctions between them. This chapter explores the theoretical underpinnings of the two terms, presents a framework for clarifying the distinctions found in emotion management actions, and describes several typical organizational interventions that have implications for emotion management. Theoretical Underpinnings Hochschild (1979, 1983) used the general term emotion work to refer to any attempt to modify the experience or expression of a consciously felt emotion

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Global Cases on Hospitality Industry

  • Timothy L. G. Lockyer(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  When the job roles require jobholders to display particular emotions and suppress others, jobholders do their own emotion management for a wage. Hochschild (1983) termed this regulation of one’s emotions to comply with occupational or organizational norms as “Emotional Labor.” She defined Emotional Labor as the management of feeling to manipulate ones physical expressions such as facial expressions and therefore Emotional Labor is sold for a wage. Therefore it has an exchange value (Hochschild, 1983).

  Across a number of occupational roles, the act of expressing socially relevant emotions (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993) during service transactions is the basis for Emotional Labor. Employees perform Emotional Labor when they regulate their emotional display in an attempt to meet organizationally based expectations specific to their roles. Such expectations determine not only the content and range of emotions to be displayed (Hochschild, 1983), but also the frequency, intensity, and the duration that such emotions should be exhibited (Morris and Feldman, 1996, 1997).

  Emotional Labor Characteristics

  According to Hochschild (1983), jobs involving Emotional Labor possess three characteristics: they require the workers to make facial or voice contact with the public, they require the worker to produce an emotional state in the client or customer, and they provide the employer with an opportunity to exert some control over the emotional activities of workers (Hochschild, 1983).

  Hochschild (1983) argued that service providers and customers share a set of expectations about the nature of emotions that should be displayed during the service encounter. These expectations are a function of societal norms, occupational norms, and organizational norms. Rafaeli and Sutton (1989) and Ekman (1973) referred to such norms as display rules, which are shared expectations about which emotions ought to be expressed and which ought to be disguised (Ekman, 1973). Display rules are learned norms regarding when and how emotion should be expressed in public (Ekman, 1972).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Public Relations as Emotional Labour

  TBC

  • Liz Yeomans(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  exchange value ’ (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7). Hochschild estimated that roughly one-third of American workers had jobs that subjected them to high demands for emotional labour, and that half of all women’s jobs called for it. She identified that the middle classes, especially in Anglo and Northern European cultures, were traditionally socialised for jobs involving a high degree of emotion management.

  Hochschild (1983) consciously used the term ‘emotional labour’ synonymously with ‘emotion management’ and ‘emotion work’; however these latter terms, according to her footnote on page 7, refer to the management of feeling in the private realm rather than the commercial context: i.e. where there is ‘use value’ or utility instead of ‘exchange value’. ‘Use value’ is not clearly defined but Hochschild appears to suggest that emotion management and emotion work equip the individual with a sense of agency and choice of when to manage emotion in social contexts, whereas emotional labour subjects the individual to an emotional script prescribed by the commercial context. The choice of term, nevertheless, connotes different meanings: for example, Bolton (2005) was criticised by Brook (2009) for preferring the less political term emotion management over emotional labour. Therefore, it is crucial to first examine the genesis of Hochschild’s emotional labour concept before moving on to discuss these different terms, which I return to later in this chapter.

  Hochschild’s position appears to stem from the first line of the first chapter where she references Das Kapital in which Marx examined the working conditions of child labourers in the nineteenth-century English factories (Hochschild, 1983, pp. 3–5). She suggests parallels between the physically exhausting conditions of Marx’s factories and the instrumental use of emotional labour by twentieth-century commercial institutions, whereby the worker becomes increasingly estranged or alienated from a sense of self. The alienating processes of factory work, referred to by Marx, literally separated workers from the products of their labour (thus rendering them powerless), while the imposed nature of production work took away self-expression or meaning in the labour process (see the discussion on workplace alienation on page 22). The main tenets of her argument are that the strain exerted on the worker by the commercialisation of feeling may lead to a loss of the authentic self, to the extent that commercial systems appropriate

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  Available until 25 Jan |Learn more

  An Invitation to the Sociology of Emotions

  • Scott Harris(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Emotional Labor is most apparent in those jobs that require workers to interact directly and frequently with customers (Leidner 1999). Occupations such as hostesses, cashiers, telemarketers, and hair stylists, come to mind. Or, imagine casino card dealers: these workers engage in friendly conversation for several hours a day as they administer a game that systematically subtracts cash from customers’ wallets (Enarson 1993; Sallaz 2002). People who sell cars, homes, cell phones, shoes, and other products might also engage in a great deal of emotion management (Prus 1989).

  In addition to customer service and sales jobs, professional occupations also require Emotional Labor: accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, social workers, and teachers all must modify their emotions in order to successfully execute their jobs (e.g., Bellas 1999; Delaney 2012; Erickson and Grove 2008). A professional who displays excessive anger or insufficient sympathy might lose clients or at least gain a bad reputation.

  It is accurate but somewhat incomplete to define Emotional Labor as being paid to manage one’s own emotions. In a broader sense, the concept of Emotional Labor also draws attention to how workers must work on other people’s feelings as well. Many jobs require laborers to try to keep customers relatively happy or satisfied. Other jobs encourage workers to reduce customers’ fear or anxiety. Imagine the confident yet consoling tone of voice that might be strategically used by nurses, flight attendants, tattoo artists, and tax attorneys. In any of these cases, the Emotional Laborer may go to great lengths not only to manage their own emotions, but to shape the feelings of customers and clients.

  Co-workers can be targets of emotion management as well. For example, when employees compete with each other for tips, commissions, or compliments from the boss, the “losers” may need to mask their envy while the “winners” suppress the urge to gloat. An employee may be slow, incompetent, or wear an excessive amount of cologne or perfume, prompting co-workers to suppress their feelings of frustration or irritation. Many employees undergo an annual performance review, where supervisors try to convey criticisms and compliments in ways that create just the right emotional effect, while workers carefully respond. Even CEOs and small business owners need to occasionally motivate employees by engaging in emotion management—perhaps by modeling enthusiasm or by presenting an optimistic demeanor while giving a speech (Humphrey 2012).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Building Service-oriented Government: Lessons, Challenges And Prospects

  Lessons, Challenges and Prospects

  • Wei Wu(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • WSPC

    (Publisher)

  Service exchanges between worker and citizen require the worker to sense the right tone and medium for expressing a point and/or feeling and then to determine whether, when, and how to act on that analysis. To ignore this combination of analysis, affect, judgment, and communication is to ignore the social lubrication that enables rapport, elicits desired responses, and ensures that interpersonal transactions are constructive.

  In Newman, Guy and Mastracci’s previous research on Emotional Labor, they discovered several important dimensions of Emotional Labor. First, at varying levels of intensity, it plays a role in nearly all government jobs. Civil servants probably recognize that the work entails emotion work, even though they may not be familiar with the term Emotional Labor itself. Frontline workers deal with the day-to-day needs of an increasingly demanding public; management handles the inter- and intra-agency demands of subordinates and superiors on everything from budget and human resources to agency turf battles. Second, they found that the performance of Emotional Labor need not lead to burnout. Public servants are as energized by intense Emotional Labor demands as they are exhausted. The difference lies in how management and workers address the emotive labor demands of these jobs. This led them to a third conclusion: Emotional Labor is part of an occupation, not simply something that a person brings to the job (or not) — compared with emotional intelligence, which is located in the person. The characteristics of the job — its purpose and role in the organization, its demands and requirements — determine whether or not job holders will find themselves exerting Emotional Labor. This led to a fourth conclusion: Agencies can screen, train, retrain, and evaluate employees on the quality of Emotional Labor that they exercise on the job. But it is the rarest office that even recognizes the emotive demands of its workers, much less evaluates and compensates for them.

  3.3. The Relationship Between Emotional Labor and Burnout

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Emotional Labor in the 21st Century

  Diverse Perspectives on Emotion Regulation at Work

  • Alicia Grandey, James Diefendorff, Deborah E. Rupp, Alicia Grandey, James Diefendorff, Deborah E. Rupp(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  A key assumption of this lens is that requiring emotions in exchange for a wage is uniquely distressing to employees. This is examined in two broad ways: 1) comparing outcomes for employees in high-EL and low-EL occupations, and 2) comparing financial motives versus other motives for performing emotion work.

  Hochschild stated that “Emotional Labor is sold for a wage … I use the synonymous terms emotion work or emotion management to refer to these same acts done in a private context” (p. 7). She recognized that emotional displays are used strategically in many social contexts (Goffman, 1959 ); however, when emotions are used for financial gain “feelings are commoditized” (1979, p. 569), and this has unique effects on the employee. Lively and Powell (2006) found that emotion display requirements were more rigidly held at work (for pay) but this was unrelated to strain; this is in comparison to emotion display requirements held at home, which have, in contrast to Hochschild’s proposal, been argued to be less rigidly held but more contributive to job strain (Wharton & Erickson, 1995 ). Surprisingly little research has assessed the assumption that performing emotion management for financial gain has personal costs (Wharton, 2009 ). Across occupations, EL demands are negatively related to wages, except for in professional jobs with higher cognitive demands (Glomb, et al., 2004 ); thus, the financial outcome of performing EL depends on job status. Financial motives for engaging in EL, however, may depend on the type of occupation. Sociologists have argued that caring professionals have a unique experience with regard to Emotional Labor (see Erickson & Stacey, 2013 ). Specifically, they are more likely to engage in EL for professional (to uphold professional norms of conduct) or philanthropic (to provide a “gift” to the patient) motives, rather than presentational (to conform to broadly held social norms), or pecuniary (to obtain financial benefits) motives (Bolton & Boyd, 2003

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Emotions in Groups, Organizations and Cultures

  • Charmine E. J. Härtel, Wilfred J. Zerbe, Neal M. Ashkanasy, Charmine E. J. Härtel, Wilfred J. Zerbe, Neal M. Ashkanasy(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Journal of Applied Psychology , 88 , 1057–1067. Bono, J. E., & Vey, M. A. (2005). Toward understanding emotional management at work: A quantitative review of Emotional Labor research. In: C. E. Hartel, W. J. Zerbe & N. M. Ashkanasy (Eds), Emotions in organizational behaviour (pp. 213–233). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brotheridge, C. M. (2006a). A review of Emotional Labor and its nomological network: Practical and research implications. Ergonomia: An International Journal of Ergonomics and Human Factors , 28 , 295–309. Brotheridge, C. M. (2006b). The role of emotional intelligence in predicting Emotional Labor relative to situational and other predictors. Psicothema (Special Issue on Emotional Intelligence) , 18 , 139–144. Brotheridge, C. M., & Grandey, A. A. (2002). Emotional Labor and burnout: Comparing two perspectives of ‘‘people work’’. Journal of Vocational Behavior , 60 , 17–39. Brotheridge, C. M., & Lee, R. T. (1998). On the dimensionality of Emotional Labor: Development and validation of an Emotional Labor scale. Paper presented at the First Conference on Emotions in Organizational Life, San Diego, CA. Brotheridge, C. M., & Lee, R. T. (2002). Testing a conservation of resources model of the dynamics of Emotional Labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology , 7 , 57–67. Brotheridge, C. M., & Lee, R. T. (2003). Development and validation of the Emotional Labor Scale. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology , 76 , 365–379. Brotheridge, C. M., & Zygadlo, D. (2006). Selling shoes through gendered emotional displays. International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion (Special Issue on Emotive Perception) , 1 , 189–203. Bulman, R. J., & Wortman, C. B. (1977). Attributions of blame and coping in the’’ real world’’: Severe accident victims react to their lot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 35 , 351–363. Burns, V. E., Carroll, D., Ring, C., Harrison, L. K., & Drayson, M.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Heart to Heart

  How Your Emotions Affect Other People

  • Brian Parkinson(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  The present section turns to the outward face of organisational emotions. Two interrelated topics have attracted the most research attention in this area. The first focuses on ways in which service workers manage their emotions when dealing with customers. The second relates to caring professionals’ regulation of emotional invol- vement with clients or patients in therapeutic encounters. In both cases, the norms, practices and regulatory regimes associated with an occupa- tional role make a difference to how employees use their emotions to influence the responses of people outside their organisation. The follow- ing sections review each of these topics in turn. Service Encounters Emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) involves regulating emotions in the service of organisational rather than personal or relational goals. It hap- pens most commonly when public-facing employees are expected to deal with clients or customers in ways that present their employers in a positive light. In order to produce the required interpersonal response, employees have to work on their emotions, by suppressing irritation, forcing smiles and otherwise orienting to the emotional needs of the people they are paid to keep happy. The psychological study of emotional labour has its roots in microso- ciological studies of ‘the presentation of self in everyday life’ by Goffman (1959) and others. However, the book that is mainly responsible for kickstarting the systematic program of research on this topic is The Managed Heart by Arlie Hochschild (1983). Hochschild succeeded in put- ting her intensive examination of interpersonal episodes in the context of a more broadly applicable and psychologically informed theory. Her analysis was influential partly because it captured a previously uncharted but wholly recognisable set of phenomena, and partly because it caught a wave of change in customer-oriented organisational culture.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Social Structure and Emotion

  • Jody Clay-Warner, Dawn T. Robinson(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  This is a field that has, thus far, remained relatively unexplored by those interested in workplace emotion. Furthermore, unlike previous work that has focused strictly on the negative consequences of emotion management (especially Emotional Labor) for individu-als (i.e., distress, feelings of inauthenticity, decreased mental and physical well being, etc.), my study also illustrates the more positive or pro-social outcomes that these processes may yield. Such an analysis stretches our previous under-standing of emotion management from something that is solely self-directed (much like coping) to include processes that are reciprocated between provider and recipient in ways that benefit both parties and, moreover, have the poten-tial to sustain personal as well as professional relationships within hierarchically organized settings. While a recent study of work and family life has suggested that the work site has become an important haven from the demands of home as corporations have become more sophisticated in their application of emotion norms and the crea-tion of emotion cultures (Hochschild 1997), the roles that emotion management and/or emotional expression among co-workers and colleagues play in the anal-ysis is surprisingly small. Although Hochschild (1997) shows that parents and spouses turn to co-workers in order to compensate for their difficulties at home (and to see themselves as competent, appreciated, etc.), she barely mentions the ways in which workers seek out co-workers in order to compensate for the diffi-culties that they also face at work (but see Gatta 2002; Lively 2000, 2002). This study, in contrast, shows that individuals actively choose others at work from Social Structure and Emotion 302 whom they solicit (and/or to whom they provide) emotion management assist-ance, often in the form of venting, damage control, or the joint reidentification of a problematic actor – typically either someone of higher status or representing a common threat.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book