Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T15:19:09.780Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The expression of suppression: Loss and emotional labour in narratives of organisational change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Melanie Bryant  and
Julie Wolfram Cox
Melanie Bryant
Affiliation:
Department of Management, Monash University, Churchill VIC, Australia
Julie Wolfram Cox
Affiliation:
School of Management, RMIT University, Melbourne VIC, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper focuses on themes of emotionality and emotional labour derived inductively from retrospective narratives constructed by employees who experienced rapid organisational change and specifically addresses the question: ‘How do people talk about the need to “dull down” their emotions during situations of organisational change?’ We highlight themes of loss associated with retrospective displays of emotion and argue that loss and emotion management are most typically associated with issues concerning transition from the past or resistance to the future. We show how emotional labour serves both to mute and, ironically, to heighten emotions in the talk of change and extend studies of emotional labour beyond the service encounter and into the realm of organisational change.

Keywords

emotional labourlossorganisational changenarrativesretrospection
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , September 2006 , pp. 116 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, A (1997) Bullying at work, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 7: 177–180.Google Scholar
Allcorn, S (1994) Anger in the workplace: Understanding the causes of aggression and violence. Quorum Books, Westport.Google Scholar
Argyris, C (1970) Intervention theory and method, Addison-Wesley, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Ashforth, B and Humphrey, R (1993) Emotional labor in service roles: The influence of identity, Academy of Management Review 18: 88–115.Google Scholar
Babbie, E (2004) The practice of social research, 10th edn. Thomson, Belmont.Google Scholar
Beckhard, R (1969) Organization development: Strategies and models, Addison-Wesley, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Blaikie, N (1993) Approaches to social inquiry. Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Boje, D (1995) Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as ‘Tamara-Land’, Academy of Management Journal 38: 997–1035.Google Scholar
Boje, D (2001) Narrative methods for organizational and communication research, Sage, London.Google Scholar
Bolton, S (2005) Emotion management in the workplace, Palgrave McMillan, Hampshire.Google Scholar
Brotheridge, C and Grandey, A (2002) Emotional labor and burnout: Two perspectives of ‘people work’, Journal of Vocational Behavior 60: 1–39.Google Scholar
Bryant, M (2003) From organisational change to organisational talk: A study of employee narratives (unpublished PhD thesis), Monash University, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Bryant, M and Wolfram Cox, J (2003) The telling of violence: Organizational change and atrocity tales, Journal of Organizational Change Management 16: 567–583.Google Scholar
Bryant, M and Wolfram Cox, J (2004) Conversion stories as shifting narratives of organizational change, Journal of Organizational Change Management 17: 578–592.Google Scholar
Butcher, D and Atkinson, S (2001) Stealth, secrecy and subversion: The language of change, Journal of Organizational Change Management 14: 554–569.Google Scholar
By, R (2005) Organisational change management: A critical review, Journal of Change Management 5: 369–380.Google Scholar
Carr, A (1999) The psychodynamics of organisational change: Identity and the ‘reading’ of emotion and emotionality in a process of change, Journal of Managerial Psychology 14: 573–585.Google Scholar
Carr, A (2001) Understanding emotion and emotionality in a process of change, Journal of Organisational Change Management 14: 421–436.Google Scholar
Collins, D (1998) Organizational change: Sociological perspectives, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
De Cock, C (1998) Organisational change and discourse: Hegemony, resistance and reconstitution, M@n@gement 1: 1–22.Google Scholar
Diefendorff, J and Richard, E (2003) Antecedents and consequences of emotional display rule perceptions, Journal of Applied Psychology 88: 284–294.Google Scholar
Doorewaard, H and Benschop, Y (2003) HRM and organizational change: An emotional endeavor, Journal of Organizational Change Management 16: 272–286.Google Scholar
Driver, M (2003) United we stand, or else? Exploring organizational attempts to control emotional expression by employees on September 11, Journal of Organizational Change Management 16: 534–548.Google Scholar
Erickson, R and Ritter, C (2001) Emotional labor, burnout and inauthenticity: Does gender matter? Social Psychology Quarterly 64: 146–163.Google Scholar
Fiebig, G and Kramer, M (1998) A framework for the study of emotions in organisational contexts, Management Communication Quarterly 11: 536–572.Google Scholar
Fineman, S (2000) Emotional arenas revisited, in Fineman, S (Ed) Emotion in organizations, 2nd Edn: 1–24, Sage, London.Google Scholar
Fontana, A and Frey, J (2000) The interview: From structured questions to negotiated text, in Denzin, N and Lincoln, Y (Eds) The handbook of qualitative research, 2nd Edn: 645–672. Sage, Thousand Oaks.Google Scholar
Ford, JFord, L and McNamara, R (2001) Resistance and the background conversations to change, Journal of Organizational Change Management 15: 105–121.Google Scholar
Guba, E and Lincoln, Y (1998) Competing paradigms in qualitative research, in Denzin, N and Lincoln, Y (Eds) The landscape of qualitative research: Theories and issues: 195–220. Sage, Thousand Oaks.Google Scholar
Hardy, CPalmer, I and Phillips, N (2000) Discourse as a strategic resource, Human Relations 53: 1227–1248.Google Scholar
Härtel, CHsu, A and Boyle, M (2002) A conceptual examination of the causal sequences of emotional labor, emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion: The argument for the role of contextual and provider characteristics, in Ashkanasay, N, Zerbe, W and Härtel, C (Eds) Managing emotions in the workplace: 251–275, Sharpe, New York.Google Scholar
Härtel, C and Zerbe, W (2002) Myths about emotions during change, in Ashkanasay, N, Zerbe, W and Härtel, C (Eds) Managing emotions in the workplace: 70–74, Sharpe, New York.Google Scholar
Hochschild, A (1983) The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling, University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Hochschild, A (1993) Preface, in Fineman, S (Ed) Emotion in organizations: ix–xiii. Sage, London.Google Scholar
Howard, CTuffin, K and Stephens, C (2000) Unspeakable emotion: A discursive analysis of police talk about reactions to trauma, Journal of Language and Social Psychology 19: 295–314.Google Scholar
Jordan, PAshkanasay, N and Härtel, C (2002) Emotional intelligence as a moderator of emotional and behavioral reactions to job insecurity, Academy of Management Review 27: 361–372.Google Scholar
Jordan, P and Troth, A (2004) Managing emotions during team problem solving: Emotional intelligence and conflict resolution, Human Performance 17: 195–218.Google Scholar
Kiefer, T. (2005) Feeling bad: Antecedents and consequences of negative emotions in ongoing change, Journal of Organizational Behavior 26: 875–897.Google Scholar
Kilmann, R (1989) A completely integrated program for creating and maintaining organizational success, Organizational Dynamics 18: 5–19.Google Scholar
King, N (2004) Using interviews in qualitative research, in Cassell, C and Symons, G (Eds) Essential guide to qualitative methods in organizational research. Sage, London.Google Scholar
Kunda, G and Van Maanen, J (1999) Changing scripts at work: Managers and professionals, Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science 561: 64–80.Google Scholar
Larson, E and Yao, X (2005) Clinical empathy as emotional labor in the patient-physician relationship, Journal of the American Medical Association 293: 1100–1106.Google Scholar
Lewin, K (1947) Frontiers in group dynamics 1: Concept, method and reality in social sciences, social equilibria and social change, Human Relations 1: 5–41.Google Scholar
Martin, J, Knopoff, K and Beckman, C (1998) An alternative to bureaucratic impersonality and emotional labor: Bounded emotionality at The Body Shop, Administrative Science Quarterly 43: 429–469.Google Scholar
Mayer, J and Salovey, P (1997) What is emotional intelligence? In Salovey, P and Sluyter, D (Eds) Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Implications for educators: 3–31, Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Mestrovic, S (1997) Postemotional society, Sage, London.Google Scholar
Morris, J and Feldman, D (1996) The dimensions, antecedents and consequences of emotional labor, Academy of Management Review 21: 986–1001.Google Scholar
Mossholder, K, Settoon, R, Armenakis, A and Harris, S (2000) Emotion during organisational transformation, Group & Organization Management 25: 220–243.Google Scholar
Mumby, D and Putman, L (1992) The politics of emotion: A feminist reading of bounded rationality, Academy of Management Review 17: 465–486.Google Scholar
Ogbonna, E and Harris, L (2004) Work intensification and emotional labour among UK university lecturers: An exploratory study, Organization Studies 25: 1185–1203.Google Scholar
Pierce, J (1999) Emotional labor among paralegals, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 561: 127–142.Google Scholar
Porras, J and Robertson, P (1992) Organizational development: Theory, practice and research, in Dunnette, M and Hough, L (Eds) The handbook of industrial and organizational psychology, Vol 3: 799–822. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto.Google Scholar
Prasad, A (2002) The contest over meaning: Hermeneutics as an interpretive methodology for understanding texts, Organizational Research Methods 5: 12–33.Google Scholar
Putman, L and Mumby, D (1993) Organizations, emotion and the myth of rationality, in Fineman, S (Ed) Emotion in organizations: 35–57, Sage, London.Google Scholar
Rayner, C and Hoel, H (1997) A summary review of literature relating to workplace bullying, Journal of Community and Social Psychology 7: 181–191.Google Scholar
Rhodes, C and Brown, A (2005) Writing responsibly: Narrative fiction and organization studies, Organization 12: 467–491.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P (1984) Time and narratives, Vol 1, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Shuler, S and Sypher, B (2000) Seeking emotional labor: When managing the heart enhances work experience, Management Communication Quarterly 14: 751–789.Google Scholar
Stake, R (2000) Case studies in Denzin, N and Lincoln, Y (Eds) Handbook of qualitative research, 2nd Edn: 435–454, Sage, Thousand Oaks.Google Scholar
Study, A (2003) Knowing the unknowable? A discussion of methodological and theoretical issues in emotion research and organization studies, Organization 10: 81–105.Google Scholar
Thoits, P (1989) The sociology of emotions, Annual Review of Sociology 15: 317–342.Google Scholar
Tolich, M (1993) Alienating and liberating emotions at work: Supermarket clerks' performance of customer service, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 22: 361–381.Google Scholar
Turnbull, J (1995) Hitting back at the bullies, Nursing Times 18: 24–27.Google Scholar
Watson, T (2002) Organizing and managing work organizational, managerial and strategic behavior in theory and practice, Pearson, Harlow.Google Scholar
Wharton, A (1999) The affective consequences of service work: Managing emotions on the job, Work and Occupations 20: 205–232.Google Scholar
White, H (1981) The value of narrativity in the representation of reality, in Mitchell, W (Ed) On Narrative: 1–23. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.Google Scholar
Wolfram Cox, J (1997) Manufacturing the past, Organization Studies 18: 623–654.Google Scholar
Wouters, C (1989) Response to Hochschild's reply, Theory, Culture and Society 6: 447–450.Google Scholar
Yanay, N and Shahar, G (1998) Professional feelings as emotional labor, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 27: 346–373.Google Scholar