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Trolley Dolly or Skilled Emotion Manager? Moving on from Hochschild's Managed Heart

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  • Sharon C. Bolton
  • Carol Boyd

Abstract

This article examines emotion in organizations and the emotion management skills organizational actors possess. While Hochschild's (1983) seminal work on emotional labour is perhaps one of the greatest contributions to our understanding of emotion in organizations, this article challenges key tenets of Hochschild's thesis and goes on to offer an evolved analysis of emotional labour and alternative conceptualizations of organizational emotionality. Using comparable data, this article depicts airline cabin crews as skilled emotion managers who are able to juggle and synthesize different types of emotion work dependent on situational demands. In addition, the capacity for cabin crews to resist and modify the demands of management and customers acts to further contradict Hochschild's claim regarding the `transmutation' of feelings.

Suggested Citation

  • Sharon C. Bolton & Carol Boyd, 2003. "Trolley Dolly or Skilled Emotion Manager? Moving on from Hochschild's Managed Heart," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 17(2), pages 289-308, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:17:y:2003:i:2:p:289-308
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017003017002004
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. George Callaghan & Paul Thompson, 2002. "‘We Recruit Attitude’: The Selection and Shaping of Routine Call Centre Labour," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 233-254, March.
    2. Hugh Willmott, 1993. "Strength Is Ignorance; Slavery Is Freedom: Managing Culture In Modern Organizations," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 515-552, July.
    3. Heather Höpfl, 2002. "Playing the Part: Reflections on Aspects of Mere Performance in the Customer–Client Relationship," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 255-267, March.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Richard Godfrey & Joanna Brewis, 2018. "‘Nowhere else sells bliss like this’: Exploring the emotional labour of soldiers at war," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(6), pages 653-669, November.
    3. Sharon C. Bolton & Maeve Houlihan, 2009. "Beyond the control‐resistance debate," Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 6(1/2), pages 5-13, March.
    4. Samantha Plummer, 2018. "Emotion management, institutional change, and the spatial arrangement of care at a psychiatric residential treatment facility," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-10, December.
    5. Kristin Carls, 2009. "Coping with control? Retail employee responses to flexibilisation," Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 6(1/2), pages 83-101, March.
    6. Baumann, Chris & Timming, Andrew R. & Gollan, Paul J., 2016. "Taboo tattoos? A study of the gendered effects of body art on consumers' attitudes toward visibly tattooed front line staff," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 31-39.

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