Changing scripts at work: Managers and professionals

Abstract

In this article, the authors explore how structural changes in the labor market for professional and managerial employees might be changing the nature of emotional labor required in these occupations. They first draw on ethnographic data in a firm noted for stable long-term employment to illustrate how efforts to create a corporate culture focus on shaping employees' emotional labor toward displays of loyalty and commitment to their employer. This is followed by a speculative analysis of how the current shift toward market-based forms of employment and an entrepreneurial work ethic is changing both the substance and the style of emotional labor.