Understanding Various Facets of Emotional Labour in Indian Organizations

Emotional labour denotes the gap between felt and expressed emotions. It works as a control mechanism for the expression of emotions in organizations. It gets regulated and controlled through the mechanisms of selection, recruitment and socialization. An attempt has been made to explore three aspects (consistent, dissonance and masking) of emotional labour in different organizations of varying nature. 50 samples were targeted from each of these organizations. However, a total number of 141 samples came in hand to give a final shape to this study. To measure the three aspects of emotional labour eight vignettes were constructed. These vignettes consisted of four positive and four negative emotional situations which were further divided into emotions related with self (pride and joy for positive, fear and sadness for negative) and those related with others (sneha and hope for positive, anger and jealousy for negative). The objective was to explore whether real feelings find expression or not and which type of organizations reflect more real feelings. It was also to be explored whether expression of real feelings get governed by hierarchical positions; which type of emotional situations demand the most emotional labour and whether bases of power play any role in the expression of real feelings. A comparative analysis of these organizations was undertaken to find out these linkages. The findings present prevalence of masking at the bottom level of organizations whereas emotional labour occurred mostly in the case of feelings of anger, pride and hope. Among the bases of power, legitimate and expert powers were found associated with consistent and masking displays in case of positive emotional situations. It was also found that members of different organizations did express their Real Feelings in case of negative emotional events at their most.