The key success to any business transaction is customer satisfaction. A customer always demands the best service and in return offers the company their loyalty. The key to this; great customer service. Smile at the customer, speak to them with a polite tone, and adjust your body language to make it friendly and approachable; all these are related to the concept of emotional labour. Emotional labour proposes that in order to ensure customer satisfaction is achieved, it is vital for “managers or employers to regulate or manage employee’s behaviour or emotional expressions to ensure service quality” (Chu 2002). The concept of emotional labour was first developed by Arlie Hochschild, who was an organizational sociologist. Hochschild stated that if an employee was employed in a service field, then it would be required from the employee to “to display specific sets of emotions (both verbal and non-verbal) with the aim of inducing particular feelings and responses among those for whom the service is being provided”(Hochschild 1983).
The concept of emotional labour has often been referred to as being the performance of emotionally acting. Emotional acting can be split into two different categories; surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting is described as being the act of expressing an emotion without actually feeling that emotion (Hochschild 1983), which includes actions that are used to cover any negative emotions with positive actions. An example of this would be a bank teller who smiles continuously at a customer even though the customer has been very rude. Deep acting is another form of emotional labour which can be further split into two different types of emotional actions; the first is to exhibit the actual emotion that yo...
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...roblem that exist in the theory of emotional labour is the emotional dissonance that exists for the employee and the impact this has on them and on their job satisfaction. Emotional dissonance is defined as being the “the feeling of unease that occurs when someone evaluates an emotional experience as a threat to his or her identity” (Janz & Timmers 2002). The constant manipulation of emotion undertaken by employees is required due to the fact that their jobs require them to always be polite and courteous to the customers, regardless to how the consumer might be treating the employee. This dissonance is said to cause negative effects on the employees; namely excessive stress related ailments. Mann, from the University of Salford, has suggested that constantly having to manage your emotions in such a way could lead to work stress (Mann, 2004).
Works Cited
Having employees with a high level of motivation is what the company wants to see in them because it means that they are more likely to handle the pressure of the job as well as provide quality service to the customer, making the customers return. Making sure that the employees stay motivated is important because it is what is beneficial to the company as well as making the employee’s time working more satisfying. Though being motivated is a good characteristic to have, it can be hard with keeping up the fast pace to many customers while providing quality service to each of them. Similarly, dealing with some customers can be difficult which leads to an employee feeling unmotivated. After all, each employee must remain sincere to their customers at all times. This is a reason why the job can be so stressful and what can cause the employees to be unmotivated to conti...
The situation in which I will be referring to throughout this essay is a family dinner celebrating my brother’s engagement to his fiancé whom my mother approves of but my father does not. The works of Arlie Hochschild on emotional work will be used to analyze the situational context. Arlie Hochschild is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley whose area of interest is in how individuals manage their emotions and perform emotional labor in places that require control over one’s character such as their workplace. Her work suggests the idea that emotion and feeling are social. In this Hochschild (1983) means that there are rules to how we feel in every situation such as birthday parties and trying to stay happy at them or funerals and being expected to express emotions of grief. An individual may engage in emotional work by changing their affective state to match the feeling rules of the situation, Hochschild (1983) refers to this as two concepts: surface acting and deep acting.
Emotional intelligence (EI) plays an important role in every worker in organization or corporation, especially someone with the authority or power inside the organization. A leader has to become a source of inspiration and catalyst for the employee to improve their working condition. One true leader has the ability to read what people want even though it never being told (Meghan, 2014). This will allow the employee to build a good connection and relationship between the leaders, thus improve how the organization being conducted. Some people may denied that emotional intelligence did affect ones’ performance, but big corporation such as Google and Microsoft have implemented emotional intelligence in their working condition as a way to improve the organization performance. Chadha (2013) emphasize that there are 4 key element in emotional intelligence; self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness and relationship management. Within these four elements, one element that truly related between a leader and employee is relationship management.
“Go Ahead- Cry at Work” illustrates many organizational behavior topics, that we have discussed in class including emotions in the workplace, emotional ability, gender diversity, and stereotyping. Through personal narrative Anne Kreamer is able to show how a lack of emotional intelligence can hurt not only individuals of a company, but their commitment to the organization. Through numero...
Goleman and Cherniss (2001) postulates that emotional competencies are learned abilities. Social awareness or skill at managing relationships does not guarantee the mastery of the additional learning required to handle a customer adeptly or to resolve a conflict. It only prognosticates that we have the potential to become skilled in these competencies.
Goleman (1998) remodelled Mayer and Salovey (1997) model into an analogous form. Since emotional intelligence is the ability to identify one’s own feelings as well as the feelings of others, capacity to motivate oneself and others and the management of emotions in relationships, it is one of the best tools to analyse the degree of skills required for each job.
...endants themselves feel angry, the requirements of their job ask them to hide their true feelings and express more positive emotions. Practically all service employees must perform some emotional labor, including professional service providers such as physicians. The long-term impact of emotional labor on psychological well-being may not be positive unless the employees learn how to cope with the emotional conflict.
In the emotional labour aspects, the employees need to be cheerful all the time when doing their work but it can be difficult for them to do this as Bryman found out that they need to face some of the troublesome customers that abuse the workers. Thus, the employees need to be highly trained. In other words, this can cost many to trained them.
Khalili, A. (2012). The role of emotional intelligence in the workplace: a literature review. International Journal of Management, 29(3), 355-370.
Emotional Labor (EL) is defined “as managing emotions through surface or deep acting by following organizational display rules in return for a wage.” (Hochschild 1983). Task performance and strategy is increased through EL and it has impact on administration of service.
Krischer, M. M., Penney, L. M., & Hunter, E. M. (2010). Can counterproductive work behaviors be productive? CWB as emotion-focused coping. Journal Of Occupational Health Psychology, 15(2), 154-166. doi:10.1037/a00183
High emotional intelligence can improve work performance and its varied aspects can contribute to work differently. One aspect of emotion...
A situation that includes the immense mental contribution in pleasure or displeasure is termed as emotional. Emotion is an experience that happens when one is actively involving their cognition. Science has its definition of what feeling is thus making the term enormous with at least one meaning. Factors that contribute to emotions are things like mood, motivation, disposition, and personality. Some theories about feelings hold cognition to be a crucial factor. People who operate under emotions are termed as fewer thinkers, though the brain is usually at work (Brown, Stephanie, & Micheal, 17). Emotions are sophisticated in all cases. Components involved in emotions
Many theorist have researched the concept of emotional labour, and although there were many similarities, there were distinctive differences. In terms of similarities, Hochschild (1983), Ashforth and Humprey (1993), Morris and Feldman (1996) concluded that emotional labour has an impact on the quality of life of the employee. By all studies, they have recognized that each sector of the workforce use different techniques in reference to emotional labour. For example, an individual that works at a children’s play centre are expected to feel and act happy and cheerful,...
Job satisfaction is a person’s emotional reaction to aspects of works such as pay, supervision, colleagues, working condition, job security, company policies and support, benefits, promotion and advancement or to the work itself (French, 1990). In other words, job satisfaction is an individual’s emotional reaction to a specific job. Falkenburg and Schyns (2007) indicate that job satisfaction can be studied from different approaches. Job satisfaction can be seen as a result of different behaviours or as a cause of behaviour. Moreover, it can be seen as an overall feeling or involving of some aspects of the job and the work situation together contribute to the feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with work (Johansson, 2010).