Consecuencias negativas de la agresividad

When employees regulate the expression of emotion in exchange for a wage, this is known as “emotional labour” (Holman, 2005:14). Emotional labour was popularised by the work of Hochschild (1983), who stated that emotional labour is the “management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display”. Emotional labour involves managing emotions so that they are consistent with organisational or occupational display rules (Grandey, 2000). Jobs necessitating the exercise of emotional labour include those that require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public, require workers to produce an emotional state in another person, or allow employees to exercise a degree of control over their emotional activities (Glomb, Kammeyer-Mueller and Rotundo, 2004). The individual is forced to exercise self-management so as to portray a specific image to others. Mann (1999, cited in Donald, 2001:283) estimates that “emotional labour is evident in approximately two-thirds of all workplace communication”.

In service organisations, employees are generally required to manage their emotional expression toward customers (Hochschild, 1983). In particular, employees are expected to display appropriate emotional expressions, whether they be positive (e.g. smiling down the phone in call centres) or negative (e.g. anger in bill collectors) (Holman, Chissick and Totterdell, 2002:63). Ball (2009:642) found that in UK and South African call centres, all aspects of employees were very closely monitored. Employees engaged in formal “self-management” on the telephone, only showing particular emotions and interacting with customers in particular ways. The constant scrutiny of surveillance penetrates to the very core of each member’s subjectivity, creating a climate in which self-management is assured (Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992:283-284).

Several authors have examined the issue of self-management from an emotional standpoint (Berger et al., 2007; Hofer, 2007; Lupton, 1998; Sumter, Bokhorst and Westenberg, 2008; Taylor et al., 2002). The findings of Lupton’s (1998) interview study carried out in Sydney reveal that self-management plays a key role in the regulation of the human emotions. In particular, “many interviewees made reference to the ‘damage’ that could be caused to one’s mental or physical health by ‘bottling up’ one’s emotions” (Lupton, 1998:47). The emotions that respondents found most difficult to control were the most distressing, namely grief, loss, anger and sorrow (Lupton, 1998:49). On the other hand, feelings seen as positive, such as joy and happiness, were viewed as requiring little control (Lupton, 1998:47). In another study by Mann (2010:362), it was found that the most frequently suppressed emotion was anger, suppressed in ten per cent of all communications.

People working in emotional labour may experience self-management in a variety of ways. For example, gender, status and work experience may affect the way in which self-management is emotionally expressed. MacDermid, Seery and Weiss (2002:408) claim that emotion management must be understood principally by examining the work- family interface. For instance, a person raised in a family with strict parents will probably manage emotions differently at work from someone brought up by lenient parents. The life experiences of older people teach them to manage their emotions differently from young people (Lupton, 1998:58). Furthermore, unlike men, who tend to suppress their emotions, women are more willing to express their feelings openly (Lupton, 1998:55).

Sawaf, Bloomfield and Rosen (2001:334) argue that “many times primal emotions are suppressed as our parents discipline us to be in more control of our emotions. This is a direct result of the parents’ fear of their own emotions being projected onto their children”. Fineman (2007) asserts that the process of controlling emotions is one which can be understood by looking at differences in childhood. He claims that:

psychoanalysts point to unresolved childhood and family tensions that are re-expressed in the workplace, rekindled when, for instance, we are judged, measured or evaluated. The threats we experience are echoes from the past that have been suppressed or repressed because of the anxiety or pain they generate. They now form part of our personality, and colour how we see the world and the way we react (Fineman, 2007:142). Berger et al. (2007:256) claim that:

during infancy and early childhood, children develop the ability to regulate their own emotions and behaviour. This development of self-regulatory mechanisms has been considered to be a crucial link between genetic predisposition, early experience, and later adult functioning in society.

Emotional labour thus comes to be regarded as a form of emotional regulation, by which employees are expected to exhibit certain emotions as part of their job. Strategies addressed by research on emotional regulation include suppression, repression, reappraisal and rumination (Evison, 2001:251). Briner (1999, cited in Donald, 2001:283) notes that “almost all supervisory or managerial jobs require the suppression of some emotions and the display of others”. Emotional regulation may be defined as “the process by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions” (Gross, 1998:275). Lord and Harvey (2002:131) maintain that the process of emotional regulation strongly influences the components that define emotion. There are two kinds of emotion regulation: antecedent-focused and response-focused. The former refers to modifying initial feelings by changing the situation, while the latter refers to modifying behaviour once emotions are experienced by suppressing, faking or amplifying an undesired emotional response (Grandey, 2000). Evison (2001:243) argues that “emotion regulation may be automatic or controlled and conscious or unconscious. Emotion regulation addresses any of the major components of emotions: experiential, cognitive, behavioural.”

Discussion of individual differences with regard to the regulation of emotions is taken a step further by Pugh (2002:147), who claims that it is affected to some degree by the context in which people live and work. In particular, an individual’s environment determines the adoption of a variety of emotional regulation strategies. Pugh notes that emotional regulation is a form of self-regulation found in theories of self-management (2002:159). Similarly, for Kanfer and Kantrowitz (2002:437) emotional regulation refers to the psychological and behavioural processes involved in the (self-)management of affective response tendencies. Through self-regulation, individuals are forced to put into effect specific display rules in order to meet the needs of the external environment (Goldberg and Grandey, 2007; Totterdell and Holman, 2003).

The implementation of display rules is a controlled process, requiring planning and effort on the part of the employee (Pugh, 2002:154). For example, employees working in the services sector:

engage in a constant process of regulating their emotional experiences and expressions in order to conform to organisational display rules. As internal feelings turn more negative, service workers have to suppress those feelings more in order to conform to display rules that generally prohibit the expression of negative emotion (Pugh, 2002:159).

Taking these factors into consideration, emotional regulation is a technique of self- management that remains both conscious and controlled, and when suppression is the prime regulatory technique employed, the regulation of emotions requires the use of cognitive resources. With repeated practice, however, even conscious emotional

regulation, when initiated intentionally, may take on characteristics of an automatic, non-conscious process (Pugh, 2002:174).

Many studies have found that the use of surveillance may cause individuals to manage their behaviours (Elden, 2003; Fox, 1989; Hofer, 2007; Marx, 2002; McKinlay, 2002; Porter, 1996; Reed, 1999; Stanton and Barnes-Farrell, 1996; Taylor et al., 2002). When people are inspected through various surveillance mechanisms, they force themselves through a process of emotion management. For example, a person who is happy might suppress cheerful emotions in front of a CCTV in order to avoid being viewed as unprofessional (Alder and Ambrose, 2005). An individual who is upset might restrain angry emotions in order to avoid punishment (Stalder, 2002). On the other hand, a person who is unresponsive might not be forced to suppress or restrain any emotion (Stanton and Weiss, 2000). It is also argued that there are variations in the ways that individuals of different cultures and genders react to EPM. For example, Panina and Aiello (2005:269) claim that “masculinity is more successful in absorbing technical innovations, because masculine cultures are performance-driven rather than concerned with social welfare”, making EPM easier to implement in more masculine cultures. The fact that EPM is widely used in service environments such as call centres adds significance to the exercise of emotional labour (Brannan, 2005). As previously mentioned, the display of particular emotions is normally a job requirement for employees working in call centres. Call centre workers may find it necessary to express empathy with customers experiencing difficult circumstances, with the concomitant requirement to separate their own reactions from the caller in the exchange (Barrell, 2000; Callaghan, 2002; Houlihan, 2001; Knights and McCabe, 1998; Mulholland, 2002;

Taylor and Bain, 1999; Taylor et al., 2002). Electronic monitoring forces employees to control their emotions in order to portray favourable images to others (Deetz, 1998:168). Call centres have not only been found to be stressful places of employment, but the work itself is considered to place significant demands on agents’ ability to subjugate and control their own emotional responses during telephone contact with customers. Emotional labour in a call centre context is facilitated by computer technology in a workplace where agents are isolated by the structured nature of their work and the immediate virtual proximity of their callers (Hingst, 2006:7). The term “emotional labour” has been extended to apply to a broader range of contexts where there is a personal investment of emotions by an individual in their work. In a daily diary study, Holman (2001, 2003) reported an association between call centres and emotional labour. CSRs reported displaying more positive than negative emotions over the course of each working day (Holman, 2005:115).

An employee’s emotional state will affect the quality of emotional labour engaged in during a service encounter. Fatigue, stress or depression will be transmitted to the customer. The relevance of emotional labour and managing feelings in service sector work has been confirmed by other researchers, including work on hospice nurses (James, 1989), the role of sexuality in off-course betting shops (Filby, 1992) and Ogbonna and Wilkinson’s (1990) work on customer service in supermarkets. It has also surfaced briefly in some of the better known studies of call centres (Taylor and Bain, 1998), and in more detail in Taylor’s (1998) research into the telephone sales operations of a British airline. He comments that “service sector employers are increasingly demanding that employees actively work on and change their feeling to match the

display required by the labour process” (Taylor, 1998:98, cited in Callaghan and Thompson, 2002:248).

In a study by Wilk and Moynihan (2005:918), call centre workers stressed the need to express positive emotions and suppress negative emotions in their telephone interactions with customers. Zapf et al. (1999:371), in a study of 250 employees working in call centres, defined emotion work (emotional labour) as the emotional regulation required of employees in the display of organisationally desired emotions. The existing literature on emotion work and action theory differentiates emotional regulation requirements, emotional regulation possibilities (control), and emotional regulation problems (dissonance). Emotional labour has been both positively and negatively related to psychological health (Zapf et al., 1999:371). In their interactions with customers, employees are often forced to express emotions they do not feel, such as being friendly or happy, or suppress emotions that they genuinely do feel, such as anger or frustration. This may lead to feelings of inauthenticity and result in anxiety and burnout. Ashforth and Humphrey (1993:96) point out that “customer perceptions of good service hinge on more than mechanical conformity with display rules. They hinge on the extent to which the service agent conveys a sense of genuine interpersonal sensitivity and concern.” Grandey and Brauburger (2002:262) associate the regulation of emotions with the customer services working environment. They identify three types of emotional work requirements (Grandey and Brauburger, 2002:264): integrative (e.g. friendliness and sympathy displayed by frontline service personnel), differentiating (e.g. bouncers instilling fear by portraying anger) and suppression (where neutralising emotions are required, as with therapists or judges). Owing to the idiosyncratic nature of emotions,

their expression may not be clearly visible. Individuals may hide or suppress their true emotions (Valsecchi, 2006:133). In order to manage situations and protect themselves from abuse or ill treatment, employees are often encouraged to suppress their true feelings and detach themselves emotionally from hostile or difficult customers (Baumeister et al., 1998; Frenkel et al., 1998; Hochschild, 1979). However, this disjuncture between what employees feel towards their customers and what they are expected to display may be difficult to resolve and may cause considerable confusion (Deery, Iverson and Walsh, 2002:474).

Rather than exerting physical labour to manufacture a product, the service labour process involves the use of emotional labour to manufacture relationships (Hingst, 2006:3). Employees are expected to display emotions that help create a desired state of mind in the customer. In order to achieve this, call centres have increasingly sought to specify and control the way in which employees present themselves to customers (Deery and Kinnie, 2002:7). Call centre work is a good example of interactive service sector work, in which the management of particular attitudes and feelings, sometimes summed up as emotional labour, is combined with product knowledge to maximise the quality and quantity of output, often measured in terms of customer satisfaction (Taylor, 1998, cited in Callaghan and Thompson, 2002:234). There is less room for authentic emotional expression, particularly for the service provider, and less opportunity to understand the reasons for another’s behaviour; this may lead to errors of attribution, as when a customer attributes good service to organisational rules and bad service to individual traits (Holman, 2005:113). Mirchandani (2005, cited in Taylor and Bain, 2006:53), has emphasised how locational masking – the compulsion (or encouragement) to adopt

Western names and accents – may add culturally-specific dimensions of psychological strain to the stresses frequently associated with emotional labour.

3.1.5 “Acting” under EPM

When people express themselves emotionally, they are forced to follow specific display rules. While interacting, people tend to play roles and try to create certain impressions (Becker, 2003). These impressions include the display of normatively appropriate emotions following certain display rules (Zapf et al., 2010:314). Customer service employees are required on an ongoing basis to adhere to display rules, defined as expression norms that dictate emotions to be expressed in attaining their work goals. While relationships with an authority figure may involve a certain level of impression management on the part of the employee, maintaining display rules in interactions with customers may be an ongoing stressor and a source of emotional labour for customer service employees (Skarlicki, van Jaarsveld and Walker, 2008:1337). To comply with display rules, workers often engage in acting (Hochschild, 1983). The stronger the display rule demands, the more emotional effort is likely to be involved in such work (Wilk and Moynihan, 2005:917).

Display rules can also be found in call centres, and observation of these rules is often enforced by EPM (Baumgartner, Good and Udris, 2002; Holman, 2003; Schuler, 2000). The frequency of customer contact in call centres is generally higher than in other service jobs, which may explain why CSRs are more often required to express positive emotions than other comparable service professionals. In most call centres, CSRs are expected to display friendliness and politeness towards callers (Deery et al., 2002).

Social situations that require emotional self-control do not only occur in interactions with supervisors and colleagues (e.g. conflict with a co-worker), but are likely to occur in interactions with clients. Call agents communicate mainly voice-to-voice with customers (Dormann et al., 2002; Holman and Wall, 2002; Moltzen and Van Dick, 2002); therefore, they have to deal with a variety of customer emotions. In such situations, call agents must display the emotions required by the organisation (e.g. empathy and friendliness), regardless of their real emotions, in order to influence customers’ emotions in a goal-oriented manner. Therefore, their job involves emotion work (Grebner et al., 2010:346).

Call centres have increasingly sought to specify and control the ways in which employees present themselves to customers (Deery and Kinnie, 2002:7). They must make customers feel as if they are really interested in customers’ problems and are happy to be talking to them (Dormann and Zijlstra, 2010:308). During service transactions, employees are expected to display emotions that comply with organisational norms or standards (Belt, Richardson and Webster, 1999). Erickson and Wharton (1997:188) suggest that employees are expected to “appear happy, nice and glad to serve the customer” in spite of any private misgivings or any other feelings they may have. Indeed, a key feature of interactive service work is the presentation of emotions specified by the organisation and embodied in the rules of employment (Morris and Feldman, 1997). Gordon (1989, cited in Deery et al., 2002:472) has described this as the commoditisation of emotions.