Abstract
The role of time in organisational and relational development remains an understudied component of work and employment. In response, this article draws attention to the ways that temporality informs relations between workers and clients in service work. Drawing on data from interviews and observations with hair stylists in salons located in the North East of England from 2016 to 2018, we provide a nuanced account of emotional service work by considering the role of the temporal dynamics of recurrence and experience. Describing that which we label ‘relational trajectories’, we show the role of time in developing more authentic service performances. We conclude that acknowledging time allows for a more refined conceptual understanding of how emotional labour is performed based on an appreciation of how relations develop and change. Emotional labour is positioned as highly nuanced and adaptive in its responses to the specificities of relational trajectories that unfold over time.
Highlights
The article presents an alternative analysis of emotional labour in service work by considering how temporality, recurring encounters and experience shape workers’ emotional performances
We have suggested a new direction for theorising contemporary service work, where emotional labour emerges as a nuanced interpretation of temporal and experiential conditions
Our research focuses on hairdressing as a particular context, our insights have relevance across other service roles that entail episodic and recurrent contact
Summary
The article presents an alternative analysis of emotional labour in service work by considering how temporality, recurring encounters and experience shape workers’ emotional performances. The temporal dynamics of service work go unconsidered, concealing employee–client trajectories and forms of emotional labour that are continuously (re)-defined and (re)-orientated. This article develops an alternative way of understanding temporality in service work, positioning emotional labour as a nuanced response to the passage of time. Attempts have been made to broaden the conceptual scope of emotional labour (Bolton and Boyd, 2003; Wouters, 1989); the performative implications of recurrent contact and cumulative occupational experience remain less explored. Explorations of the impact of time on relational experience and the emotion work of service employees are largely absent from existing research. This article focuses on service encounters that involve recurrent employee–client contact
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