ELTWeekly Vol. 4 Issue#10 | March 5, 2012 | ISSN 0975-3036
1. What is Emotional Labour?
Emotional labor is the expression of organizationally desired emotions by service agents during service encounters (Hochschild, 1979, 1983; Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). Morris and Feldman (1996) define emotional labor as “the effort, planning, and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions” (p. 987). Grandey (2000) has defined emotional labor as “the process of regulating both feelings and expressions for organizational goals” (p. 97). Emotional labor has been regarded as a type of impression management, because it is a deliberate attempt by the individual to direct his or her behavior toward others in order to foster both certain social perceptions of himself or herself and a certain interpersonal climate (Gardner & Martinko, 1988; Grove & Fisk, 1989).
Hochschild (1983) has defined emotional dissonance as the separation of felt emotion from emotion expressed to meet external expectations, and contends that it is harmful to the physical and psychological well being of employees. When an employee is required to express organizationally desired emotions that contradict genuinely felt emotions, emotional dissonance may be experienced. This is considered a form of individual-role conflict, such that an individual’s response conflicts with role expectations regarding the display of emotions (Zapf, 2002).
Rafaeli and Sutton (1987) suggest that displayed emotions can serve as control moves which, as defined by Goffman (1969) are an individual’s strategic manipulation of emotional expressions designed to influence the behavior of others. Sutton and Rafaeli (1988) propose that displayed emotions will not only be seen as characteristic of the individual, but will be ascribed to the organization as well. Consequently, organizations generally require emotional labor to ensure the display of positive emotions because it is expected that regulated emotional expression will increase sales through the reinforcement provided to the customer in the form of positive socially desirable emotions.
2. Emotional Labour in the Different Service Sectors
In the case of convenience stores, Sutton and Rafaeli (1988) found that where a premium is not placed on warm friendly service, sales volume does not increase when it is provided. In this situation, customers are more concerned with the speed of the transaction so a neutral demeanor actually served to help clerks influence the behavior of their customers and therefore provide faster service that led to increased sales. Therefore, the authors suggested that a warm emotional front may promote sales when customers expect that it should and will be a central part of the service provided by organizations such as at Disneyland (Van Maanen & Kunda, 1989). Hence, emotional labor requirements that are appropriate in one service environment may be inappropriate and dysfunctional in another environment (Morris & Feldman, 1996). This is also seen in the case of bill collectors whose emotional labor environment is the direct opposite of a warm emotional front. It is this negative emotional front, if rendered successfully that will increase payments by debtors, and hence increase profitability of the bill collection agency.
It was in her 1983 book “The Managed Heart : The Commercialization of Feeling” that Arlie Russell Hochschild first coined the term emotional labor to refer to “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” (p. 7). Hochschild (1983) examined the development of emotions into a marketplace commodity, and how it is incumbent upon the service employee to manage their emotions as a part of the job. Her chief contention was that emotion management was detrimental to service employees because their emotions were now mandated by the organization.
Hochschild (1983) identified two methods that employees use to manage their emotions: Surface acting, which corresponds to managing observable expressions, and deep acting, which corresponds to managing feelings. She also introduced to the service context, the notion of display rules, which are shared norms about appropriate emotional expression (Ekman, 1973). It is adherence to these display rules that can result in negative consequences for service workers such as burnout or job stress (Hochschild, 1983).
Morris and Feldman (1996) proposed that emotion Morris and Feldman (1996) proposed that emotional labor is comprised of four dimensions: Attentiveness to display rules, frequency of emotional display, variety of emotions to be expressed, and emotional dissonance. Display rules are generally a function of societal, occupational, and organizational norms (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989).
The more attentiveness to display rules that is required, the more psychological energy and physical effort the service job will demand from employees. Within this dimension there are two sub-dimensions, duration and intensity. The longer the emotional displays the more likely they will become less scripted; consequently, longer emotional displays require greater attention and emotional stamina (Hochschild, 1983). Cordes and Dougherty (1993) have shown that the longer the interaction, the more burnout the employee is likely to suffer. Conversely, research on convenience store clerks (Sutton & Rafaeli, 1988; Rafaeli, 1989) suggested that short interactions with customers involved highly scripted interaction formats, such as a simple thank you and maybe a smile. This implies that short interactions require less emotional effort. Typically, surface acting will not produce intense emotions, so deep acting is required because the employee must actively call to mind thoughts, images and memories that will aid in expressing the required emotion. Therefore, work roles requiring display of intense emotions entail more deep acting and thus greater effort on the part of the role occupants (Morris & Feldman, 1996).
The frequency of emotional display has been the most studied dimension of emotional labor, and still remains an important indicator because the more often an organization requires socially appropriate emotional displays, the greater the demand for emotional labor. Emotions displayed within organizations can be classified as positive, negative, or neutral (Wharton & Erickson, 1993). If employees are required to change their emotions frequently then this requires more active planning and monitoring of their behavior, hence more emotional labor. The wider the range of emotions to be expressed, the more emotional labor the employee will have to perform, such that variety of emotion is the third dimension.
Morris and Feldman’s (1996) fourth dimension, emotional dissonance, as already described, is the conflict between genuinely felt emotions and organizationally prescribed emotions (Middleton, 1989). Emotional dissonance makes emotional labor more difficult because when conflicts between genuinely felt emotions and organizationally desired emotions exist, greater control and management of behavior is necessary. For instance, this may occur when salespeople have to sell products to which they are not fully committed. Lack of commitment to a product may require considerable emotional effort to display the positive emotions necessary to effectively sell this product.
Two of the long-term consequences of emotional labor identified by Grandey (2000), burnout and job satisfaction deal with individual well-being. Burnout is a stress outcome that is comprised of three dimensions, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Burnout will occur if an employee is emotionally invested in interactions with customers and has little recourse to recuperate from the drain on emotional resources (Jackson, Schwab, & Schuler, 1986). Job satisfaction provides an estimation of how an employee feels about his or her job. In general, research has shown that customer service employees with a high level of emotion regulation tend to be less satisfied with their jobs, but there has been some research that may contradict this finding.
3. Does Teaching Involve Emotional Labour?
Teaching is stressful (Borg & Riding, 1991; Travers & Cooper, 1996); In comparison with other professions, teachers show high levels of exhaustion and cynicism, the core dimensions of burnout (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996; Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998). In India, the country where the current study is being conducted among employees of service sector, educators have the highest burnout levels compared to workers in all other human services and white collar jobs. However, it is important to note that the majority of teachers are not anxious, stressed, unmotivated, or burned-out (Farber, 1984). Quite to the contrary, the vast majority are content and enthusiastic (Kinnunen, Parkatti, & Rasku, 1994; Rudow, 1999) and find their work rewarding and satisfying (Borg & Riding, 1991; Boyle, Borg, Falzon, & Baglioni, 1995). So far in the occupational health psychology literature, the negative aspects of teaching have dominated.
Teachers are central to student’s engagement in learning, their influence being “powerful and pervasive … the most constant factor in determining the quality of school/college life for students”. Teachers’ influence operates through their relationships with students, their approaches to learning and teaching (pedagogy), and the classroom environments they create. In the classroom scenario, a teacher has to regulate his / her emotions in accordance with the classroom environments and students moods.
In the teaching profession, caring is primarily defined as those emotions, actions and reflections that result from a teacher’s desire to motivate, help or inspire their students. Whilst caring can be connected to teachers’ pedagogical or classroom management strategies, it also exists and is demonstrated within the broader social context of teacher–student interactions in and out of the classroom situation.
Although emotions are at the epicentre of teachers’ work (Hargreaves, 1994, 1998; Zembylas, 2003), the intangible emotional and empathic qualities which make a ‘‘good teacher’’ from the viewpoint of the students cannot be measured and are thus ‘‘considered worthless’’ (Constanti & Gibbs, 2004, p. 247) by policymakers.
Teaching and learning are socially situated practices that are deeply embedded in emotional experiences (Hargreaves, 1998). Discussing professional identity, or the individual’s ability to negotiate and improvise aspects of a professional role, requires an understanding of how emotions guide our professional practices and decisions. In fact, reason and emotion are interdependent because our reasoning depends on emotional choices (Zembylas, 2003, p. 223). Teachers often possess a strong personal commitment towards their profession, and teachers’ emotions guide the formation of their identities (Nias, 1986; Zembylas, 2003). Teaching involves ‘‘human nurturance, connectedness, warmth and love’’ (Hargreaves, 1994, p. 175), and each teacher’s individual beliefs about their role in caring for students form a crucial part of their identity. Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002) add that political interests and personal values shape teachers’ emotions and function as a rationale for their professional actions. This coheres with MacLure’s (1993) observation that teachers frequently use their identity or political belief system to justify the way they choose to engage in their work. Teachers are passionate beings (Hargreaves, 1998, pp. 835–836), and an individual’s professional philosophy is mediated by their personal belief system.
Teaching is ‘‘charged with positive emotion’’ (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 835) and takes place at the intersection of personal and public life (Palmer, 1998). The ethical and humanistic dimensions of teachers’ work frequently act as a source of intrinsic motivation for individual teachers, and inspire them to remain committed to the profession.
Teachers as people cannot be separated from their craft (Nias, 1989, p. 203), and the act of teaching requires individuals to possess a genuine emotional understanding and empathy towards others (Hargreaves, 2001, p. 1059). The role that emotions play in teachers’ work is rarely acknowledged in public policy, and professional teacher standards (NSW Institute of Teachers, 2005) tend to downplay or ignore the emotional dimensions of the teaching role. The nature of teaching cannot be expressed within ‘‘technical competencies’’, but centres around human interaction and emotional understanding (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 850). Is becoming a teacher synonymous with knowing how to act in a given situation? The participants in this study saw managing relationships to be a ‘‘given’’ in their daily work, and had to negotiate between their own desire to ‘‘personally go the extra mile’’ and their need to maintain a professional distance from their students.
Do teachers need to create an artificial persona in order to avoid becoming ‘‘too involved’’ with their role? Successful teaching requires teachers to create an atmosphere that promotes empathic understanding feel that his/her work often involved ‘‘creating a sense of belonging with kids you don’t really know’’.
Is being able to facilitate such an atmosphere a valuable skill, or an intrinsically personal attribute? Possessing the ‘‘capacity for connectedness’’ is inherent in effective teaching, and teaching cannot be reduced to techniques precisely because of its emotional dimension. Even so, it is evident that choosing to care about students as a professional involves ‘‘knowing how to care the right way and amount’’.
Hochschild (1983, p. 19) notes that the emotions which we display privately can be controlled by corporations, but the participants frame their engagement as a conscious decision that was not always valued by their colleagues. Some teachers believe that ‘‘concrete results rather than nurturing’’.
It has been observed that the main determinant of a teacher’s success is their personality and the combination of ‘‘enthusiasm and kindness’’ which they were able to exude. To some, the human element of teachers’ work meant that teaching is ‘‘an acting job’’ in which teachers needed to sustain positive feelings to engage their students and ‘‘make them feel involved and excited by’’ the educational experience. Being able to act as a professional and still sustain a sense of self within the role has emotional implications for teachers, and need level of ‘‘emotional energy and sheer adrenalin’’ which one needs to maintain whilst teaching. The need to separate work in the classroom from a teacher’s personal life has led to view teacher as a ‘‘performer’’. This can even eventually lead to burnout (emotional exhaustion) in the long run if at constant intervals self efficacy and positivity is not induced through Faculty Development Programs and Motivational Lectures.