Emotional labour in organizations

Abstract

Emotion and rationality are considered by many practitioners to be mutually exclusive concepts as encapsulated in the generally held belief that there is no place for emotions in today’s rational, task-oriented work environments. Illustrates that emotions and their expression are, in fact, controlled and managed in organizations by a wide range of formal and informal means, ensuring that certain emotions are expressed while others are suppressed. Very often, employees are expected to conform to these expectations about emotional display even when they conflict with inner feeling. When this conflict results in individuals suppressing genuine emotion or expressing fake emotion, the work or effort involved in doing so is termed “emotional labour”. Demonstrates how emotional labour, which can have both functional and dysfunctional consequences for the individual and their organizations, is not restricted to interactions at the customer-organization interface, but is becoming increasingly prevalent within all organizational communications. © 1997, MCB UP Limited