IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v30y2016i6p966-983.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Deskilling emotional labour: evidence from department store retail

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Ikeler

    (SUNY College at Old Westbury, USA)

Abstract

How have the skills of service jobs changed? Have they undergone deskilling, upgrading or some contingent or compensatory development? This study examines these questions as they pertain to frontline sales work in US department stores. It begins by identifying an operational concept of service skill latent across recent debates and then examines it via qualitative comparison of full-line and discount stores in New York City. Based on an evaluative framework akin to that of Blauner, this study’s workplace-level findings suggest that the industry-level succession of full-line stores by discounters has embodied a decline in the complexity and autonomy of salespersons’ emotional labour.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Ikeler, 2016. "Deskilling emotional labour: evidence from department store retail," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 30(6), pages 966-983, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:30:y:2016:i:6:p:966-983
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017015609031
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017015609031
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017015609031?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sharon C. Bolton, 2009. "Getting to the heart of the emotional labour process: a reply to Brook," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 23(3), pages 549-560, September.
    2. Irena Grugulis & Steven Vincent, 2009. "Whose skill is it anyway?," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 23(4), pages 597-615, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Donna Baines & Annabel Dulhunty & Sara Charlesworth, 2022. "Relationship-Based Care Work, Austerity and Aged Care," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 36(1), pages 139-155, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dragos-Paul Pop, 2014. "Online Tool For Soft Skills Evaluation And Employee Management," Romanian Economic Business Review, Romanian-American University, vol. 8(2), pages 410-419, December.
    2. Malabika Sahoo & Sumita Mishra & Sasmita Mishra, 2018. "Influence of Group Composition on Participant Reactions to Training: A Study in an Indian Power Transmission Organization," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 43(3), pages 141-155, August.
    3. Anne Benmore, 2014. "Emotion Management in Small Hotels: Meeting the Challenges of Flexibility and Informality," Eurasian Journal of Social Sciences, Eurasian Publications, vol. 2(3), pages 1-13.
    4. Ian Kessler & Paul Heron & Sue Dopson, 2015. "Managing patient emotions as skilled work and being ‘one of us’," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 29(5), pages 775-791, October.
    5. Netta Avnoon, 2021. "Data Scientists’ Identity Work: Omnivorous Symbolic Boundaries in Skills Acquisition," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(2), pages 332-349, April.
    6. Claire English & Gareth Brown, 2023. "My mum is on strike! Social reproduction and the (emotional) labor of ‘mothering work’ in neoliberal Britain," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(6), pages 1941-1959, November.
    7. Bennett, Fidel & Escudero, Verónica & Liepmann, Hannah & Podjanin, Ana, 2022. "Using Online Vacancy and Job Applicants' Data to Study Skills Dynamics," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264023, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Huajie Jiang & Qiguo Gong, 2022. "Does Skill Polarization Affect Wage Polarization? U.S. Evidence 2009–2021," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-17, October.
    9. Dennis Nickson & Robin Price & Hazel Baxter-Reid & Scott A Hurrell, 2017. "Skill requirements in retail work: the case of high-end fashion retailing," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(4), pages 692-708, August.
    10. 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.
    11. Ruth Woodfield, 2016. "Gender and the achievement of skilled status in the workplace: the case of women leaders in the UK Fire and Rescue Service," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 30(2), pages 237-255, April.
    12. Tracey Yeadon-Lee, 2012. "Doing Identity with Style: Service Interaction, Work Practices and the Construction of ‘Expert’ Status in the Contemporary Hair Salon," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 17(4), pages 56-66, November.
    13. Angela Knox & Chris Warhurst, 2018. "Occupations, the Missing Link? A New Theoretical and Methodological Approach to Product Markets, Skill and Pay," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 32(1), pages 150-168, February.
    14. Izabela Grabowska, 2018. "Social Skills, Workplaces and Social Remittances: A Case of Post-Accession Migrants," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 32(5), pages 868-886, October.
    15. Donna Baines & Annabel Dulhunty & Sara Charlesworth, 2022. "Relationship-Based Care Work, Austerity and Aged Care," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 36(1), pages 139-155, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:30:y:2016:i:6:p:966-983. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.