The effect of emotional labour on work satisfaction and emotional display behaviour

Although sociology of organizations never banned emotions from its field of inquiry, first the sociology of emotions elevated them to central research objects. Disparate research on various types of enterprises shows that both managers and employees are much more emotional than most scientists would care to admit. Under constant pressure not to display their fears, anxieties or worries, they have to balance a mixture of emotions attending solidarity and competition with their peers. Whereas managerial roles actually call for occasional displays of anger at subordinates, anger is beyond the pale for subordinates who are supposed to swallow anger, humiliation or fear. Capitalist labour, no matter whether this of managers or that of workers, exacts a heavy emotional toll. While in handling their work managers rely heavily on the emotional support of their peers and secretaries, employees spin nostalgic stories or take to subversive workplace humour. Against this broader perspective, Arlie Hochschild's research and its critique have focused exclusively on the workers' emotional toll. In centre of interest is emotional labour exacted by employers and the many ways of managing undesired feelings which this labour requires. Hochschild's critics stress that subordinates often find ways of evading supervision and playing with rules for emotional display, so that they are much less subject to emotion management than her research agenda implies. Although Hochschild's research and its echo produced the only coherent body of theory-guided research to emerge so far within the sociology of organizations under the influence of the sociology of emotions, the chapter ends with an argument that her valuable yet work-focused approach has become constraining in times of disjointed, turbulent capitalism. Social change demands that we enlarge our scope of inquiry to include the experience of lay-off and unemployment as well as work-unrelated emotions and the broader society into our purview.

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“Bring yourself to work”: rewriting the feeling rules in “personalized” social work

Journal of Organizational Ethnography ◽

10.1108/joe-06-2018-0030 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (3) ◽

pp. 325-338

Author(s):

Emilie Morwenna Whitaker

Keyword(s):

Social Work ◽

Design Methodology ◽

Work Practice ◽

Social Work Practice ◽

Ethnographic Case Study ◽

Content Type ◽

Emotional Labour ◽

Emotional Display ◽

Feeling Rules

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how feeling rules are constructed, experienced and contested within personalised social work practice. It considers how organisations seek to shape practitioners towards certain forms of emotional display in increasingly market-oriented conditions. It contributes to our understanding of the place of “backstage” emotional labour in seeking to shape and direct social work practice. Design/methodology/approach A single immersive ethnographic case study of an English social work department was undertaken over a period of six months. Findings This paper reveals embedded tensions that emerge when practitioners are caught between traditional bureaucratic function, the incursions of the market and feeling rules of relatability, commitment and creativity. Originality/value This paper contributes to the scant literature on frontline experiences of personalisation in children’s services and the importance of “backstage” emotional labour for shaping and directing social work practice. Importantly, it considers the complexity of emotional labour within an organisational context, which is neither fully marketised, nor fully welfarised, a position many welfare organisations now find themselves in.

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Death, dying and emotional labour: problematic dimensions of the bone marrow transplant nursing role?

Journal of Advanced Nursing ◽

10.1046/j.1365-2648.2000.01561.x ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 952 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Daniel Kelly

Keyword(s):

Bone Marrow ◽

Bone Marrow Transplant ◽

Marrow Transplant ◽

Nursing Role ◽

Emotional Labour

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Different Forms of Work Satisfaction

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040.3.3.209 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 209-218 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

André Büssing ◽

Thomas Bissels

Keyword(s):

Work Satisfaction ◽

Preliminary Evidence ◽

Qualitative Approach ◽

Extended Model ◽

Work Situation ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Global Satisfaction ◽

Evaluative Processes ◽

The Right ◽

Level Of Aspiration

The extended model of different forms of work satisfaction ( Büssing, 1991 ), originally proposed by Bruggemann (1974) , is suggested as a distinctive qualitative approach to work satisfaction. Six forms of work satisfaction—progressive, stabilized, resigned satisfaction, constructive, fixated, resigned dissatisfaction—are derived from the constellation of four constituent variables: comparison of the actual work situation and personal aspirations, global satisfaction, changes in level of aspiration, controllability at work. Preliminary evidence from semi-structured interviews with 46 nurses shows that the dynamic model is headed in the right direction (qualitative differentiation of consistently high propertions of satisfied employees, uncovering processes of person-work situation interaction). Qualitative methods demonstrated their usefulness in accessing underlying cognitive and evaluative processes of the forms, which are often neglected by traditional attitude-based satisfaction research.

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