Workplace emotion regulation : making the case for emotional labour and emotion work

[Truncated abstract] The workplace emotion regulation literature has, for the most part, been concerned with emotional labour, which focuses on the employee's regulation of emotional displays during client interactions. It has recently been suggested that emotion work, which arises when employees regulate emotional displays with organisational insiders, such as co-workers, should also be considered. Early empirical research suggests that emotion work may have negative effects including increased job stress, reduced job satisfaction, higher psychological distress and emotional exhaustion. The main aim of the present project is to expand the workplace emotion regulation research beyond the customer interface to include other types of interactions, such as between employees, and in doing so explore this more complete view of workplace emotion regulation. The current research project has four main research objectives: 1) to consolidate the emotional labour literature in order to identify an appropriate conceptualisation and operationalisation of emotional labour, 2) to include emotion work alongside emotional labour within workplace emotion regulation research, 3) to determine the most appropriate way to conceptualise and operationalise emotion work, and 4) to understand the antecedents and consequences of emotion work and emotional labour. Despite considerable research in the area of 'emotional labour' since Hochschild (1983) first coined the term, the area of emotion work has largely been neglected. This thesis provides a case for emotion work to be included in workplace emotion regulation research and for it to be differentiated from related constructs, such as emotional labour.
It is argued emotion work is most appropriately conceptualised as emotion regulation and, hence, should also be operationalised as a set of emotion regulation The workplace emotion regulation literature has, for the most part, been concerned with emotional labour, which focuses on the employee's regulation of emotional displays during client interactions. It has recently been suggested that emotion work, which arises when employees regulate emotional displays with organisational insiders, such as co-workers, should also be considered. Early empirical research suggests that emotion work may have negative effects including increased job stress, reduced job satisfaction, higher psychological distress and emotional exhaustion. The main aim of the present project is to expand the workplace emotion regulation research beyond the customer interface to include other types of interactions, such as between employees, and in doing so explore this more complete view of workplace emotion regulation...
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Australia, 2013