Emotions in Organisation

Emotions in Organisations
What are emotions?
Physiological, behavioural and psychological episodes experienced toward an object, person or event that create a state of readiness
A feeling, psychological state and biological state that incline a person to act in a certain way
Emotions are experiences.
Emotion and Work
As actors we all through the process of socialisation learn how to control and manage emotions in certain contexts
Emotions are getting more important in service section – service as part of product differentiation
Emotions have always been part of work
Explicit
Emotional labour
Emotion and Reason
The home as the place for the heart and the workplace as a place of rational thinking (efficient & profitable operation)
Emotions have come to be seen as a resource that can be organisationally defined and managed
Two aspects: Fun and friendliness – to create a happy work environment for a higher work performance; to improve employee retention, performance and organisation commitment (Surman and Sturdy 2009)
Emotional labour – display right emotions to encourage the purchase of goods; cannot throw temper, suppress emotions
Fun and Friendliness
Should managers encourage workers to express their fun and playful side?
Theoretically yes, but in reality, it depends on industries
These initiatives appear to be: liberating and empowering often welcomed in workplaces Limitations on the kind of ‘fun’ that is allowed – arranged fun Friendliness as instrumental and faked – to advance one’s career, a tactic in organisation politics
What is emotional labour?
The effort, planning and control needed to express organisationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions.
The interaction between the employee and the customer requires employees to manipulate both their own emotions and those the customer as part of the employee’s wage labour and for the commercial benefit of the organisation.
This then creates the ‘feeling rules’ that prescribe the required employee emotional engagement with customers
Experiencing Emotional Labour
Different ways of performing emotional labour – to manipulate own emotions and those of the customer; to display the right emotion appropriate for the situation
Surface acting – display emotion without internalising the roles; i.e. the emotions are faked
Deep acting – internalising the roles to experience the required behaviour; i.e. putting yourself into the other person’s shoes
Can emotional labour result in job satisfaction?
Most argued that people become detached from their own emotions and feel faked; but others say it encouraged to look cheerful and feel better in return
Impact of Emotional Labour on Employee Well Being: Airline Industry
‘Customer is always right’ ethos: created consumers who ‘cannot be appeased’ – unequal relationship – customer stronger than employees customer act in disrespectful ways towards employees created environment in which emotional labour Is performed
Airline management determines how emotional labour will be experienced (Williams, 2003)
Reactions to Emotional Labour (Wharton 2009)
Amount of emotional labour – duration; might become problematic when it is over long period of time
Dissonance between felt and displayed emotions – display desired emotions towards rude customer
Emotional dissonance – the conflict between required and true emotions
Monitoring emotional labour – mystery shoppers, recording calls
Emotional labour coping strategies – let off steam while maintaining mask of emotional display

Who Doesn’t Want to Perform Emotional Labour?
Working class men
They experience difficulty engaging in emotional labour and hiding their true feelings when challenged by managers and customers (Nixon, 2009). ‘I’ve got no patience with people basically. I can’t put a smiley face on, that’s not my sort of thing.’
(Colin, aged 24, unskilled manual worker)
‘I was doing retail work, you know sales assistant ... The customers treated you [badly] and you couldn’t say anything or you’d get sacked ... And I thought ‘I’m not taking this.’
(John, aged 20, warehouse worker)
Notes:
1. Most new work are in retail, hospitality which are focused on woman
2. So, whats left for low skilled men whose jobs had disappeared?
a. Popular work include driving and security work
b. Amend work that allows them to retain some power, control and authority
Hochschild’s The Managed Heart Emotion Work, Feeling Rules & Social Structure
Emotion work – changing an emotion so that it is appropriate to the situation – manage expected feeling actively
The Managed Heart
Emotional labour (most challenging) – ‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display’
3 features:
a) Feeling becomes commodity
b) Occurs in an un unequal relationship
c) Rues of display are laid down by management – e.g. receptionist are expected to smile at all times to customer

Feelings: commodities to be bought and sold; emotional display forms part of the wage effort bargain

Aesthetic Labour (Warhurst and Nickson, 2007)
The employment of workers with certain embodied capacities and attributes that favourably appeal to customers
This labour refers to the hiring of workers with corporeal capacities and attributes that favourably appeal to the senses of the customers and which are then organisationally mobilised, developed and commodified through training, management and regulation to produce an embodied style of service.
Management is convert with how workers feel, but also how they look organisationally mobilised developed commodified
Includes a workers deportment, style, accent, voice and attractiveness
Notes:
1. appearance is important. Thus employer moulds employees on dress code, grooming and language to portray a distinct style of labour
2. aesthetic labour is possessed by worker prior to employment, whereas emotional labour is brought into being when employment commences