M. Copp, WHEN EMOTION WORK IS DOOMED TO FAIL - IDEOLOGICAL AND STRUCTURAL CONSTRAINTS ON EMOTION MANAGEMENT, Symbolic interaction, 21(3), 1998, pp. 299-328
This paper explores how workers try to manage their emotions under con
ditions that doom them to fail. The workers in question-floor instruct
ors at a sheltered workshop for people with developmental disabilities
-were expected to infuse clients with positive feelings about work and
to help transform them into committed workers. But structural conditi
ons-boring, poorly paid assembly work and long gaps between contract j
obs-forced them to obtain clients' compliance through coercive and con
frontational emotion management techniques that contradicted their ide
ological beliefs. The floor instructors sought to peacefully increase
their control over clients through ''preventive emotion management'' b
ut most often they experienced a loss of control, leading some of them
to experience ''burnout.'' This paper defines burnout as ''occupation
al emotional deviance'' that workers experience when they cannot manag
e their own and other's emotions according to organizational expectati
ons.