Emotional labour in corporate change programmes: The effects of organizational feeling rules on middle managers

This paper addresses the effects of corporate change programmes on the emotions and ultimately the performance of the so-called ‘middle managers’ within these organizations. Drawing on empirical data from a recent case study in a large engineering company, the paper addresses the extent to which Hochschild's highly original writing on the commercialization of human feeling (1983) and the concept of emotional labour is applicable to managers in today's organizations. Emotional labour is defined as: ‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display’ requiring one ‘to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others’ (Hochschild 1983: 7). The conclusion reached is that emotional labour appears to be a growing but much ignored phenomenon in organizations today, which is worthy of attention and further research by the HRD community.

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