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Reexamining Emotional Labor
Mastracci, S. H., Guy, M. E., & Newman, M. A. (2012).
Emotional labor and crisis response: Working on the razor's edge. Routledge. 192 p.
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1. Introduction
This is a book about the emotional labor of crisis responders. However, considering the
characteristics of crisis responders who do intense emotional labor in extreme situations, they are
only presented as a representative, but this book deals with emotional labor of workers in the public
sector in general.
It was published in New York in 2012, and it's a short book, just under 200 pages in total.
However, it challenges the mainstream of public policy studies and sheds new light on emotional
labor that has been overlooked. The authors' perspectives were very refreshing to me and taught
me more about the role and challenges of crisis responders (or public sector workers).
The book is written by three authors: Sharon H. Masracci, associate professor at the
University of Illinois at Chicago; Mary E. Guy, professor and director of the Master's Program in
Public Administration at the University of Colorado Denver; and Meredith A. Newman, professor
and chair of public administration at Florida International University. The authors are experts who
have studied human processes related to public service provision, public management, human
resource management and employment policy, gender or women's issues, and emotional aspects
of work.
They define the emotional labor of crisis responders (or public sector workers) based on
their respective academic research achievements and practical experience, analyze its
characteristics from various perspectives, and present methodologies and strategies to deal with
emotional labor well. In other words, based on case studies and interviews on handling emotional
labor in crisis situations, the authors present practical guides on how practitioners can handle
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emotional labor in crisis situations, and enhance understanding of emotional management within
organizations. They wrote this book to contribute to empowerment of practitioners and managers.
2. Description
This book consists of eight chapters, and the first chapter analyzes why emotional labor is
necessary in the public sector. The author argues that "cold head, warm heart" will be the ideal that
citizens want when they meet public officials, and that emotional labor as well as cognitive labor
is required to achieve that combination. Emotional labor is defined as “efforts to arouse appropriate
emotions within oneself or suppress inappropriate emotions, and efforts to arouse certain emotions
in others or suppress other emotions”. In addition, they argue that public sector workers need
emotional labor to meet public expectations for them or perform given tasks more efficiently
because they work directly or indirectly with citizens.
Chapter 2 sheds light on the importance of emotional labor and analyzes its characteristics.
The authors classify three types of labor and claim that each has the following characteristics. The
results of physical labor are visible. The results of cognitive labor are invisible, but quantifiable.
Emotional labor results are invisible and cannot be quantified. In addition, according to this book,
due to the difficulty of measuring (quantifying) emotional labor compared to measuring physical
ability and cognitive ability, emotional labor has been overlooked in public service academia, and
studies on public service motivation, leadership, and emotional intelligence have become
mainstream. However, the authors argue that while public service motivation, leadership, and
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emotional intelligence are personal qualities of workers, emotional labor is an element of a job, so
its importance cannot be overlooked in public sector jobs that require it.
Chapter 3 explains the importance of human resource management in crisis response work,
a type of emotional labor. The author argues that since emotional labor is required for first
responders, it cannot be replaced by machines, and human resource issues such as recruitment,
training, and maintenance are very important. Therefore, useful means for managing crisis
response practitioners include critical incident stress management to discuss feelings with
colleagues, self-management plans to induce personal growth of practitioners, and recruitment
processes that emphasize the importance of job seekers' self-awareness.
Chapter 4 describes the duties of Public Information Officers (PIO), a type of emotional
worker. According to the book, because first responders are the first public officials a victim sees
at the scene of an accident, while PIOs are the first public officials the public sees after an accident.
So PIOs are also part of the crisis response process. Because PIOs must appear deeply involved in
crises while emotionally and physically distancing themselves from crisis to convey competence
and build trust, the authors believe that the work of PIOs is more art than science and more art than
'fact'. It is closer to 'human relations'.
Chapter 5 discusses responsiveness and accountability. Crisis responders allocate resources
and respond to crisis situations by determining who should get help first, as well as who can get
help if they do not have enough time or money to meet all their needs. And in this process,
emotional labor is required, which is to make decisions according to established standards or norms
without being swayed by emotions. According to the authors, crisis responders feel responsible
for a variety of things, including themselves, their colleagues, government leaders, and citizens in
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their communities. Not only the existence of various stakeholders, but also the fact that each
person's perspective and judgment criteria are different complicates the issue of responsibility.
Chapter 6 describes the characteristics of people who perform emotional labor.
Respondents' jobs are said to be able to achieve their original purpose when they have legitimacy
and representation. This is because the legitimacy and representativeness of respondents is a very
important factor in building citizens' trust in them. It also explains that gender differences affect
organizational culture, emotional culture, and expectations of respondents.
Chapter 7 reviews the discussion of administrative discretion in public administration.
Emotional labor accompanies the exercise of one's discretionary power because one must follow
rules and standards without being swayed by emotions. Among crisis responders, professional
codes of conduct are said to have a significant impact on general decision-making and exercise of
discretion. However, professional norms converge more and more similarly as crisis responders
spend more time working with team members, and the author argues that this should be noted
because it can lead to an isolated situation that is far from reality.
Chapter 8 summarizes the research results so far and the unsolved issues on emotional
labor.
The most impressive part of the text of the book is that more than 86% of injured workers
experience some symptoms of PTSD within 24 hours of being at the site of a major emergency,
they are unable to continue the job, experience personality changes, and experience changes in
their marriage. It was a research result that family life may be disrupted or physically ill. So far,
the focus has been on physical pain as a crisis responder's grievance, but I've come to realize that
emotional destruction is also a serious problem. Jobs and careers are very important parts of a
person's life, and it was very surprising and shocking that these could change or end in an instant.
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3. Evaluation
The strength of this book is that it paid attention to the importance of emotional labor,
which had been overlooked, and that it contained various interview cases throughout the book that
could support the authors' claims and views.
The emotional labor of crisis responders (or public sector workers) is very high and, as
mentioned earlier, so powerful that it can end a person's job and career in an instant. Therefore,
despite the difficulty of quantification, it is very good to explain the importance and characteristics
of emotional labor through multifaceted interviews and qualitative analysis, and to present
guidelines for the practical field.
The authors adopted a face-to-face interview method as a research methodology, and
selected 43 police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, sexual assault nurse
examiners, domestic violence and victim support workers, etc. according to job function and job
experience, and conducted in-depth interviews of more than one hour each.
As one of the qualitative data collection methods, the interview research technique is very
useful in understanding how individuals or groups think of their life world and how they construct
their real lives. The purpose of interview research is to understand the world from the subject's
point of view, to clarify the meaning of human experience, and to reveal the world they
experienced before scientific explanation. Interviewing is a sophisticated technique close to art
rather than a standardized social science method because it is the process of socially producing
meaning through linguistic interaction, that is, through conversation, knowledge about the lives of
the subjects necessary for research is obtained. (Lee, 2007).
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In-depth interview is a research method that collects and analyzes the subject's oral
statements in a flexible conversational format to find out the sequence of events, specific process,
and the subject's expressed perception of the event. Research in which in-depth interviews are
frequently used is mainly for analysis of a group's daily culture, discourse analysis, and analysis
of the mutual relationship between individuals and groups, and it can produce rich and vivid
research results that are difficult to study with other research methods (Shin, 2007).
Based on the results of these interviews, the authors objectified emotional labor, which is
difficult to quantify, and secured the validity of their arguments.
However, if there is one regrettable point, it is that when citing the contents of the interview,
detailed information about the interviewee was not presented. Of course, there is a brief mention
of the interviewee's job, but in addition to that, if the interviewee's career and work environment
were explained in more detail, the reliability of the interview content would have been further
enhanced and it would have helped to understand the overall context of the authors' arguments.
4. Summary
The authors emphasized the importance of emotional labor, which had been overlooked in
the field of public policy studies, and analyzed various aspects related to emotional labor from
various angles. Crisis responders (or public sector workers) engaged in emotional labor can use
this book as a useful guideline for developing competencies to do their jobs better. In addition,
through this book, managers of crisis response agencies will also know what is needed to support
practitioners in resolving their grievances and maintain stable organizational work.
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Throughout reading this book, I could not help admiring the insights and efforts of the
authors, who went against the mainstream of policy science and pioneered a new field of emotional
labor.
Moreover, the authors' research is not yet complete. For example, the author wrote in the
book, "There is much left to learn about the practice of demographic representation and emotional
labor, and it may be reasonable to assume that workers and citizens of similar backgrounds and
cultures can reach agreement faster than they look and live differently." And it even presented
tasks that require further research in the future.
I support the authors' challenges to mainstream management theories, aphorisms, and
principles, and expect reasonable answers to the yet-to-be-discovered challenges through followup research.
< References >
Lee Young-hee. (2007). Interview Investigation Techniques: Interview Success Techniques for
Qualitative Research. Korea Human Settlements, vol.303, 109-116.
Shin Hye-ran. (2007). In-depth interview research methodology: data collection and analysis
techniques for learning from others. Korea Human Settlements, vol.307, 60-68.