Assessing Cognitive Ethical Logics for Commercial Emotions

Abstract

The usefulness of cognitive ethical logic in understanding the ethicality of emotional labour at commercial establishments cannot be undermined, and drawing on this perspective, the present study explores the derived moral logics for commercialized emotions especially in the context of call centres in two distinct subsets of professionals: potential working professionals and working professionals with experience. A sample of 129 respondents has been used for collecting data through open-ended questions and vignettes, which were designed to extract the perception of ethicality for emotional labour. The content of the responses were analysed by using cues from the grounded theory framework. Results indicate that both the respondent subgroups present equally strong consideration of emotional labour as unethical and not- unethical (rather than ethical). Threatened employee dignity emerges as the most important logic for considering emotional labour as unethical, while for the same to be considered not-unethical, the role of job description and compensatory justice gain significance. The results of the study have been discussed with the help of various frameworks of business ethics.