Emotional Labour in a Production Setting?

Abstract

In 1983, Airlie Hochschild published a 'classic' “The Managed Heart”. Since this publication, scores of articles have been produced to explore the various manifestations of emotional labour across a range of service industries. However, there is a substantial absence when it comes to emotional labour when face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions with customers are not present. This article presents data collected from a food-processing plant that has seen a strong managerial attempt to develop a unitarist culture. Employees face a significant level of emotional labour in their interactions within this culture. As has been found in the service industry literature, employees react differently to the emotional labour that they face, and indeed, not all emotional labour is negative for employees.