Emotional Labor Performance Research Articles

How Institutional Logics Inform Emotional Labour: An Ethnography of Junior Doctors

Sociological analysis of emotional labour can be aided by considering how institutional logics inform the performance of emotional labour. We consider the link between institutional logics and emotional labour by conducting an in-depth case study of junior doctors in a large UK hospital. We point to three key institutional logics – bureaucratic, consumerist and professional logics – and show how they inform the emotional labour of junior doctors. We also consider how doctors respond to these logics through enactment processes of choice, resistance and negotiation. In this way, we make an important theoretical contribution by identifying the way that institutional logics relate to the performance of emotional labour. We also make an important empirical contribution by contributing to a growing body of ethnographies on the emotional labour of doctors.

Assessing the impact of selfie-taking tourists on local tour guides in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone: a netnographic analysis of a dark tourism location

ABSTRACT Self-portrayed photographs, more commonly known as selfies, are a modern way of expressing oneself at popular tourist destinations. Selfies enable individuals to be seen by others on the web. There has been fierce debate about whether taking selfies is appropriate from an ethical standpoint at tourist places with darker and more sensitive histories. This study, a first of its kind, is a multi-method analysis of tour guides’ emotions towards selfie-taking tourists in the dark tourism location of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. As a phenomenon that has been introduced fairly recently, extant research has addressed the consequences selfies have on dark touristic sites, but no current study has considered the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The methods used to evaluate the current situation are netnography and one-on-one, in-depth interviews with Chernobyl tour guides. Findings show that there has been a degree of conflict between tour guides and tourists who take selfies. Performance of emotional labor is detected amongst some tour guides. Interestingly, this result emerged more during interviews than from data mining in the online community. Managers of the site of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are advised to look into ways of implementing a more responsible tourist behavior structure.

Emotional Labour and its Outcomes Among Nurses at a Tertiary Hospital – A Proposed Model

Emotional labour is a crucial aspect of nursing, involving the management of emotions to meet organizational and societal expectations. Limited research exists on understanding emotional labour and the outcomes of emotional labour among nurses, which can range from positive outcomes like job satisfaction and patient satisfaction to negative outcomes like emotional exhaustion and job exhaustion. This study aims to assess emotional labour and its outcomes among nurses. It contributes to a better understanding of its impact and informs interventions to enhance nurses' well-being and job performance. To assess the emotional labour performance among nurses, to assess the emotional conflict among nurses, to determine the positive and negative outcomes of the emotional labour performance among nurses and to propose a model for emotional labour performance in healthcare a descriptive study was conducted among a sample population of approximately 270 nurses from Sri Ramachandra Hospital G-Block (Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India). Subjects were recruited from the nursing department, and after obtaining their consent, they were given a questionnaire to collect demographic data and evaluate emotional labour and its outcomes. Additionally, direct observations using the Observed Emotion Rating Scale were conducted. The study utilized systematic random sampling. The sample size was determined to be 270 nurses, with a final response rate of 87%. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed using Cronbach's alpha, which yielded satisfactory results. The primary data collected was analyzed using Microsoft Excel and SPSS software with appropriate statistical tools. The findings are emotional labour performance; deep acting was more prominent than surface acting among nurses. Emotional harmony was found to be higher than emotional dissonance and emotional excess in emotional labour conflicts. Positive outcomes of emotional labour were more prevalent than negative outcomes. Deep Acting and surface acting significantly affected positive and negative outcomes. This study highlights the significance of emotional labour in nursing and its impact on nurses' well-being and job performance. By prioritizing nurses' emotional well-being and implementing interventions to mitigate the negative outcomes of emotional labour, healthcare organizations can create a supportive work environment that enhances both nurse satisfaction and patient care.

“Finding a Way To Say ‘No’”: Library Employees' Responses to Sexual Harassment as Emotional Labour

ABSTRACTPatron‐perpetrated sexual harassment (PPSH) is a form of gender‐based violence and a pervasive problem in libraries. However, contending with PPSH requires the performance of emotional labour by library workers because of workplace cultures and professional values that prioritize patron and institutional comfort. To better understand library workers' emotional labour as they respond to PPSH, we analyzed 510 survey responses where participants shared their experiences of, their responses to, and feelings about, PPSH. Three responsive strategies emerged: acceptance, indirect refusal, or direct refusal. Overwhelmingly, library workers reported negative emotions about the incidents. Despite these negative feelings, library workers consistently responded to PPSH by performing emotional labour that upheld “polite and professional” values. Our findings raise concerning questions for the field of library and information studies about the implicit and explicit expectations placed on library workers to perform emotional labour in response to PPSH, particularly within the context of a feminized profession and with the knowledge that PPSH harms library workers. Our goal is to support library workers and their institutions to “find a way to say ‘no’” to gender‐based violence in the workplace.

Cross-Cultural Emotional Labor: A Study of NGO Workers in Haiti

ABSTRACT Although demand for emotional labor (EL) is at its highest in times of disasters, there is a lack of studies on EL by disaster response and recovery workers in intercultural contexts. Using in-depth interviews and secondary data collected in Haiti, this article focuses on the link between culture and EL. We find that an understanding of the cultural context and the cultural competencies used to effectively navigate that context are central to each step of effective emotional labor performance. These findings help disaster response organizations better understand the value of cultural competence and how it effects the performance of EL.

Fake Smiles for the AI Boss? A Study of Employees’ Emotional Labor Performance Under AI Supervision

Fake Smiles for the AI Boss? A Study of Employees’ Emotional Labor Performance Under AI Supervision

«Светлые» и «темные» стороны эмоционального труда: концепция отчуждения в теории А.Р. Хокшилд и современные исследования

A.R. Hochschild’s book “The Managed Heart” has now been translated intoRussian, which is the beginning of an extensive research field of emotional labor. However, many of the most important aspects of the book are still waiting to be comprehended. One of them is the question of how alienation and emotional labor are related. Hochschild examines the alienation of the worker from his or her feelings and self in the performance of emotional labor in the service industry. The purpose of this article is not only to analyze Hochschild’s use of the concept of alienation, but especially to find an answer to the question of why this concept remains relevant to contemporary researchers of emotional labor. According to the author of the article, Hochschild uses the Marxist notion of alienation to give a critical potential to the interactionist approach to emotion management in the workplace and connect labor processes at the micro-level and the subjective emotional experience of the service worker with macro-processes and structures. This allows Hochschild and her followers to analyze the inequalities, role tensions, conflicts, and psychological problems of workers. The Marxist style of reasoning is important for Hochschild to characterize a vast class stratum — service workers, whose emotionality exploitation serves to maximize economic profits. As researchers of emotional labor have shown, not all types of emotion management can be alienating andhave negative social and psychological consequences. Thus, the notion of emotional labor is ambivalent in the sense of its consequences but remains heuristic for understanding and investigating labor relations also in the new social realities, in the context of the pandemic and digitalization of society.

Secondary emotional labor: How female nurses respond to the contradictions of caring.

Prior research suggests that caring is in tension with a financially incentivized, technologically-driven healthcare system. Nevertheless, employers, the public, and nurses expect nurses to be caring when providing care to patients and families. This article focuses on nurses' emotional labor strategies when managing emotions related to organizationally imposed interference with caring. We analyzed 27 semi-structured interviews with nurses and found that the unsuccessful performance of emotional labor spills over into the women's relationships at and outside of work. We apply Di-Cicco-Bloom and DiCicco-Bloom's concept of secondary emotional labor to examine our findings and how secondary emotional labor further develops the alienation and exploitation concepts of Hochschild's emotional labor theory. We suggest a structural change in nurses' job design that remedies contradictory caring expectations and supports their emotional labor to prioritize a climate of caring for patients.

The Effect of Psychological Capital and Emotional Labor on Job Performance: A Study on Five Star Hotel Enterprises in Antalya

Service quality and customer satisfaction, which are basic goals of hotel enterprises, can be achieved by the high job performance of qualified staff. The focal point of this study was the key role that psychological capital and emotional labor play in high job performance. In this study, which aimed to determine the effect of psychological capital and emotional labor on job performance, the sample group consisted of 400 personnel employed by 16 five-star hotel enterprises operating in the centre of Antalya, specifically in the districts of Kemer and Alanya. The data collected by questionnaire technique were analysed by statistical techniques, such as frequency and percentage distribution, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, Pearson’s correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis, independent samples t-test, and one-way analysis of variance. What is more, a factor analysis was administered for validity and reliability, and Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients were calculated. Obtained data suggested that the psychological capital levels of employees were positive above the medium level. The general emotional labor performance of employees was at the medium level. The job performance levels perceived by employees were high. As a result of the correlation analysis performed in the study, positive correlations were identified between psychological capital and emotional labor at r=0.529, psychological capital and job performance at r=0.717, and emotional labor and job performance at r=0.595. The regression analysis showed that one unit of change in the psychological capital caused an increase of 0.543 on the job performance, and a change of one unit in the psychological capital resulted in an increase of 0.712 on the job performance. In addition, according to the t-test and variance analysis results, while psychological capital, emotional labor, and job performance did not differ significantly according to gender, marital status, age, or education level, psychological capital levels of the hotel employees differed significantly according to their departments, and emotional labor performance differed significantly in line with their departments and working durations.

Psychosocial predictors of emotional labour among employees of merged and acquired banks in Ibadan, South-West, Nigeria

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are common among financial institutions. This process often exerts immense pressure on employees of these institutions. Hence, this study touches on the significant but neglected human angle aspect of M&A. Therefore, the study examined psychosocial predictors of emotional labour among employees of merged and acquired banks in Ibadan. The study design is cross-sectional, which involves using a quantitative data collection method to elicit responses from the participants. Furthermore, the convenience sampling method was used and selected four hundred, and twenty-two employees acquired or merged during the consolidation and post-consolidation eras in South-Western Nigeria. A structured questionnaire that measured job satisfaction, acculturation, attitude to M&A and emotional labour was used to collect data from the respondents. Data analysis was done using SPSS software window 10.0. The mean age of respondents was 32 years, with a standard deviation of 7.31. The results showed that attitude towards M&A (β = 0.39; p < .05) and acculturation (β = 0.36; p < .05) were significant independent predictors of emotional labour. Furthermore, attitude towards M&A (β = 0.32; P < .05) and acculturation (β = 0.28; p < .05) were also significant independent predictors of emotional labour per se, personal efficacy, and for false face, respectively. Therefore, it was concluded that employees' emotions and job satisfaction should be factored into the management's strategic plan during M&A because the success or failure of this undertaking rests on them. Therefore, it was recommended that bank managers pay adequate attention to acculturation and the attitude of employees during a major organisational change to enhance emotional labour performance.

Investment in Emotional Labor: Daily Resource Spirals and Recovery

Service workers perform emotional labor with customers by surface acting (modifying expressions) or deep acting (modifying mood). Surface acting clearly has more costs and fewer gains than deep acting, but it is less clear how those daily costs and gains contribute to the performance of emotional labor over time. Based on emotional labor theorizing and conservation of resources (COR) theory, daily investment of resources (i.e., emotional and cognitive) are needed for surface and deep acting, which result in that day’s net resource loss or gain, respectively. We argue that over time, this creates accumulating resource losses or gain (i.e., spirals) that predict future strategy use, unless one recovers those resources after work. We conduct a novel and rigorous test of this idea, using two experience sampling methodology (ESM) studies of service workers, and applying latent difference score models to capture resource accumulation over time. Across both studies, results supported resource gain and loss spirals: Deep acting required an investment of emotional resources that created increasingly greater resource gains, while surface acting had accumulating losses to emotional resources each day, making it harder and harder to invest in deep acting in future days. Importantly, recovery after work, specifically low-effort activities, mitigated resource loss spirals from surface acting and enhanced resource gain spirals via deep acting. Results offer new evidence for untested theoretical assumptions about emotional labor and COR, while providing recommendations for how to replenish and protect service workers’ emotional resources over time.

Roles of Customer Satisfaction and Customer Perceptions in Relationships between The Emotional Labor Performance

Roles of Customer Satisfaction and Customer Perceptions in Relationships between The Emotional Labor Performance

Impossible or just irrelevant? Unravelling the ‘authentic leadership’ paradox through the lens of emotional labour

The clamour for leaders to be authentic in enacting their roles is now widely heard in both the academic literature and popular media. Yet, the authentic leadership (AL) construct remains deeply problematic and arguably impossible to enact. Using the performance of emotional labour (EL) as a lens to view relational transparency, a core component of AL, our research surfaces the paradoxes inherent in this construct and their implications for practicing leaders. Our data reveal something of the mystery surrounding how practicing leaders are able to feel authentic even as they manage their emotions as a routine tool of accomplishing their leadership role. This apparent disconnect between the experiencing of authenticity and the actions/interactions in which this experience is embedded raises profound questions concerning authenticity as a phenomenon, how it is discursively constructed, its relationship to inauthenticity – especially in the practice of leadership – and even its relevance. Drawing on these concerns, we suggest an agenda for future research in relation to authenticity in leadership and highlight the value of EL as a challenging ‘test context’ for honing our understanding of what ‘authenticity’ might mean.

Donning the mask: the impact of Covid-19 on emotional labour performance

Emotional labour, the workplace management of emotions, is integral to work performance and relies on the observation and recognition of emotion in the service industry. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a sudden global increase in the number of employees and service users required to wear face masks, resulting in a new normal for emotion expression and emotion recognition in the emotional labour performance. This paper explores emotional labour theory and proposes a theoretical consideration of the challenges and benefits this modification to the service user-employee interaction may have. Suggested challenges include changes to the service user-employee relationship due to impaired communication and increased customer anxiety and frustrations. Organisational responses are discussed in relation to training and cross-industrial sharing of knowledge. Finally, opportunities for organisational research are discussed alongside suggestions for future research.

Emotional labor of nurses in the front line against the COVID-19 pandemic.

To analyze nurses' experiences in the front line of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the performance of emotional labor (EL), aiming at its characterization and identification of support strategies and development opportunities of nurses and practices. Qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory study, with content analysis of eleven written narratives and reports from a focus group composed of nurses with experience in caring for patients with COVID-19 from different Hospital Centers in Lisbon, Portugal. Five themes were extracted: 1) Challenges experienced by nurses in the frontline; 2) Emotions experienced by nurses in service care; 3) Emotional responses of nurses and patients: impact on care; 4) EL of nurses in the patient care process; 5) Opportunities for development in the face of the emotional challenge required of nurses in combating COVID-19. The nurses demonstrated the ability to transform this profoundly emotional experience positively.

“THERE IS QUEER INEQUITY, BUT I PICK TO BE HAPPY”

AbstractAs racialized and gendered structures, organizations can reinforce complex inequalities, especially with regard to emotional labor. While the literature on emotional labor is established, little is known about how race and sexual orientation shape feeling rule enforcement. Interviewing staff at university LGBTQ resource centers, we argue that feeling rules have a sexual orientation-based dimension and are experienced and enforced differently based on race. White LGBTQ staff find that they can express anger strategically to bring awareness to issues of race, but do not confront racism in their work for fear of alienating other Whites, which they believe would harm their center. LGBTQ staff of color experience organizational consequences for their anger, which is directed toward the racism they and students of color experience in the university. Lacking the credential of Whiteness (Ray 2019), staff of color find they cannot reach the benchmark set by Whites’ enthusiastic performance of emotional labor. These feeling rules operate in service of what James M. Thomas (2018) calls diversity regimes, which are performances of a benign commitment to racial equality, that retrench racial inequality by failing to redistribute resources along racial lines. By sanctioning anger toward the university—as an institution that reproduces racism—feeling rules have organizational consequences: Whites can advance through compliance and enthusiasm; staff of color are terminated or denied opportunities; and critiques of racism are silenced. While created to address diversity, LGBTQ centers are purposely not structurally positioned to radically shift resources in a way to combat racism, and feeling rules maintain these arrangements while allowing universities to claim a commitment to equality. These findings hold implications for broader concerns of racism, sexual orientation, and inequality within work organizations, especially manifestations of worker control within diversity work.

Emotional labour and cord blood collection: frontline perspectives

PurposeThis paper aims to examine emotional labour in the work of frontline staff (FLS) of the Canadian Blood Services' Cord Blood Bank (CBB), contributes to understandings of emotional labour by allied healthcare workers and suggests implications for healthcare managers.Design/methodology/approachQualitative interviews with 15 FLS were conducted and analyzed as part of a process evaluation of donor recruitment and cord blood collection in Canada.FindingsEmotional labour with donors and hospital staff emerged as a vital component of FLS' donor recruitment and cord blood collection work. Emotional labour was performed with donors to contribute to a positive birthing experience, facilitate communication and provide support. Emotional labour was performed with hospital staff to gain acceptance and build relationships, enlist support and navigate hierarchies of authority.Research limitations/implicationsThe results indicate that FLS perform emotional labour with women to provide donor care and with hospital staff to facilitate organizational conditions. The findings are based on FLS' accounts of their work and would be enhanced by research that examines the perspectives of donors and hospital staff.Practical implicationsAttention should be paid to organizational conditions that induce the performance of emotional labour and may add to FLS workload. Formal reciprocal arrangements between FLS and hospital staff may reduce the responsibility on FLS and enable them to focus on recruitment and collections.Originality/valueThis paper addresses a gap in the healthcare management literature by identifying the emotional labour of allied healthcare workers. It also contributes to the cord blood banking literature by providing empirically grounded analysis of frontline collection staff.

Emotional labour in a translocal context: rural migrant workers in China’s service sector

ABSTRACT The service industry is a major pillar of China’s urban economy. Rural migrant workers form the backbone workforce in China’s urban service sector. Despite much attention to the work and life of rural migrants in Chinese cities, urban employers’ regulation and rural migrants’ performance of emotional labour in the service sector remain understudied. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews over eight years, we examine how urban employer and rural migrant workers relationally navigate intersecting emotional and migration regimes to contest, (re)produce and (re)configure rural migrants’ power and status in the urban space. We develop the conceptualization of ‘translocal emotional reflexivity’ to elucidate multiplicated emotional regimes and subjectivities between places of origin and arrival, as well as how emotional reflexivity is mobilized to regulate, navigate and negotiate conflictual translocal emotional subjectivities. We discuss the ‘institutionalized individualization’ of emotional labour – a process in which an employer systematically engineers a sense of emotional agency for workers to re-imagine, re-appropriate and individualize their emotional performance to serve institutional aims – as a distinctive feature of how the regulation and performance of emotional labour has evolved over the past decade in China.

Locking out emotions in locking up older prisoners? Emotional labour of Belgian prison officers and prison nurses

This contribution looks at the emotional labour of prison professionals in the wake of an increasing number of older adults populating this institution. The rationale behind this selective focus is twofold. Firstly, the topic of ageing behind bars has only received scant attention, even though this phenomenon is also increasingly penetrating prison walls. Secondly, little attention has been paid to the performance of emotional labour by practitioners in prison systems working with the specific population of ageing prisoners. Against this background, this contribution reflects on the ambivalent emotional nature of the work of not only the ‘professionals of custody’ but also of the ‘professionals of care’ in a prison setting. This topic will be examined by drawing on cross-disciplinary insights stemming from a wider range of literature and is underpinned by new data originating from an empirical ethnographic study into the meaning of imprisonment in later life in Belgium.

Enhancing the tourist experience with emotional intelligence

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss how emotional intelligence (EI) can be incorporated into the tourism sector to enhance the tourist experience through managing the service encounter between tourism service representatives and tourists.Design/methodology/approachA review of the relevant literature on EI and tourism is undertaken to understand the link between EI and tourist experience. The paper begins by explaining the evolution and conceptualisations of EI and discusses its empirical evidence in various contexts.FindingsEI is proposed to be incepted into the tourism context through its influence on the service encounter between tourism service representatives and tourists. The service encounter is diagnosed as being emotionally charged through discussing tourism offerings, emotional labour performance and tourist attributions.Originality/valueThis paper provides a fresh look into the link between EI and tourism service encounters and suggests the application of EI into the tourism context to enhance the tourist experience.