Enormity of Emotional Labour and its Significance in the ... - Icmis.net

International Conference on Technology and Business Management March 18-20, 2013
However, display rules have been conceptualized not only as role requirements of particular occupational
groups, but also as interpersonal job demands, which are shared by many kinds of occupations
6. Emotional labour and various occupations
In The Managed Heart, Hoshchild shows how the flight attendant is trained to manage fear at turbulence and
anger at cranky or abusive passengers, a bill collector is trained to restrict compassion or liking for debtors. As
the number of service jobs grows, so too does the amount of emotional labor.
While many jobs can be stressful and even emotionally draining at times, it is in personal service occupations
that emotional labour becomes a routine demand made on workers in the normal course of their day. Among
other samples, such as sales representatives and debt collectors, Hochschild's research gave most attention to
airline flight attendants employed by a private carrier with a reputation for high quality service while seen by
many as an interesting and even glamorous career; it also qualifies as one which can make heavy demands in
terms of emotional labour. The flight attendant, for example, must make passengers feel safe and well cared for
in a pleasant environment, almost like guests in his or her own home. At the same time, they must repress their
own feelings of anger or fear induced by difficult passengers or dangerous in-flight incidents. Unlike workers in
other jobs, the flight attendant is expected to be as friendly, composed and alert at the end of a 16-hour shift as
at the beginning. They are required to present a positive image of the airline, and even its home country, to large
groups of people in a confined space who are able to observe any sign of annoyance or insincerity.
In the early organizational literature on emotional labor in service settings, the work of Rafaeli and Sutton was
prominent and they focused on emotional labor in service settings, across a variety of service jobs, and showed
that customer reactions and organizational outcomes, particularly sales, were indeed affected by how employees
express their feelings. Positive attitudes expressed by employees can create favorable impressions in customers’
minds, and negative attitudes can similarly engender unfavorable impressions (Pugh, 2001; Schneider,
Parkington, & Buxton, 1980). When employees are seen by customers to be rude, or they behave
inappropriately towards customers, an organization may lose in many ways. Not only may a direct sale be lost,
but also future revenue from both the offended customer as well as everyone he/she convinces to avoid
patronage. Further, while we know that positive outcomes are often associated with positive expression of
emotion by employees (Pugh, 2001), the full effects of positive and genuine emotional expression by employees
can have far-ranging beneficial effects for their employer.
Pugh (2001) found that displays of positive emotions by bank employees were related to displays of positive
affect by customers, and that these displays impacted positively on their evaluations of overall service quality.
Teaching is a profession that involves a high level of emotional labour. This includes such behaviours as
surface acting (displaying an emotion that is not actually felt), deep acting (the activity undertaken to actually
feel a required emotion), and suppression of emotion .Teachers are expected to perform emotional labour in
order to achieve the dual outcomes of customer (i.e., student satisfaction, and profit for the management)Studies
revealed that managing the emotional demands of teaching requires considerable effort. Teachers who perform
more emotional labour tend to be more emotionally exhausted and less satisfied with their teaching career - they
also experience more conflict between their work and home lives. The emotional demands of teaching also
attracts wide research and it is been found that it can even threaten teachers’ health, job satisfaction, work-life
balance wellbeing and relationships with pupils.
Increasingly, the role of the Information Technology department within organisations is seen as a service role.
At the heart of IT services is the service encounter, the point where the customer and the IT service employee
interact, whether over a phone at the help desk, in the office at the desktop, or in a corridor. This service role for
information technology moves the focus to customers since delivering a service is about meeting customers’
needs. The thousands of individual service encounters make up the service and determine the quality of the
service as perceived by customers. The rapid rise of the service sector, particularly the call centre industry has
made the study of emotional labour increasingly important. The In a lot of IT industry, for example in call
centres, most of the service interactions are voice to voice between two individuals. Regular complaints and the
anger of frustrated members of the public can leave call centre staff emotionally drained and less able to respond
appropriately to customer calls. call handlers voice is analysed for pace, volume and timbre to ensure the right
`mood'. Emotional labour is particularly required in jobs in call centres where irate or rude customers are
frequently encountered.. High levels of turnover and absenteeism in the industry invites special attention
because of the relationship between the emotional demands (emotional labour) of call centre work and job
satisfaction
Nursing and health care is one big minefield in the emotional labour stakes. For a nurse who sees herself as
a caring ,compassionate person, taking a few moments to console a patient in distress represents not a burden
but makes her job more meaningful. Inorder to show compassion, care and warmth , nurses have to suppress
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