Emotional Labor Since: The Managed Heart

Abstract

The phrase “emotional labor” was coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in 1983 in her classic book, The Managed Heart. Jobs requiring emotional labor typically necessitate contact with other people external to or within the organization, usually involving face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact, especially in service work. In this article, the authors summarize Hochschild's pathbreaking work and assess the state of the current multi- and interdisciplinary literature on emotional labor. They distinguish between two interrelated areas of research on emotional labor. The first area involves predominantly, though not exclusively, qualitative case studies of employees at workplaces in the service sector. A second set of studies, primarily quantitative, investigates the link between emotional labor at home, in different jobs, or in nurturing activities (a specific form of emotional labor) and its consequences for individual employees' job satisfaction, productivity, and pay. © 1999, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.