EMOTIONAL LABOR

Emotional Labor

Emotional Labor

Introduction

Every organization requires its employees to exhibit a certain kind of behavior with respect to the job description. It either formulates the behavior policies or let the individuals chose on their own as to what type of emotions and feelings they best understand to demonstrate towards other colleagues as well as superiors. Thus, the organizations display, what is known as 'emotional behavior', in various contexts. This, in turn, affects the performance and turnover of an employee in the organization.

Discussion

A form of emotional regulation describes emotional labor in which the workers are anticipated to present positive and confident emotions as the basic part of their job, in order to assist the achievement of organizational goals. The intended effects of these emotional displays are on other targeted people, who can be clients, customers, subordinates or co-workers. The best example of this concept can be taken in the hospitality industry. At a restaurant, a waitress is anticipated to come up to the standards of exhibiting a sophisticated emotional behavior, which includes expressing positive emotion towards clients and smiling. The term "emotional labor" was first defined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild as the "management of feeling to create a publicly facial and bodily display". With respect to his opinions, all the jobs involving the concept of emotional labor are referred to as those which (1) entail voice-to-voice or face-to-face contact in order to maintain relations with the public; (2) need the worker to produce an emotional state in another person; (3) let the a degree of control to be exercised by the employees over their emotional activities. (Mary, 2008)

The comparison of emotional labor can be performed in service organizations and production organization. Let us analyze the application of emotional labor in nursing. Nurses working in a hospital are expected to express positive emotions towards patients, such as warmth and compassion. They exhibit feelings and sentiments such as emotional expressiveness, which refers to the capability to use facial expressions, voice, gestures, and body movements to transmit emotions. This is necessary to excel in their services towards the patients. Positive affective display in such service interactions, includes smiling and conveying friendliness, are positively associated with important the outcomes with reference to patients, such as intention to serve better and deliver overall superior quality.

However, it might happen that emotion labor in an organization may give rise to the emotional exhaustion ...