abstract: Municipal courtrooms are brimming with a variety of positive and negative emotions from defendants who are primarily encountering the criminal justice system for the first time. Municipal court judges and bailiffs must work together and find ways to communicate important information about courtroom processes to up to 70-120 defendants a day. This dissertation investigates how municipal court judges and bailiffs from two municipal courthouses respond to three organizational challenges associated with emotion--defendant confusion about courtroom processes, handling high caseloads while treating defendants as customers of the court, and managing the serious and tedious emotional moods of the courtroom environment. Using qualitative methods of observation and informal and formal interviews, this dissertation analyzes how emotion cycles between judges and bailiffs help give sense to and break sense of defendants while simultaneously helping them navigate the challenges of their work. Findings detail the nature of work in municipal court--explaining the challenges associated with emotion that judges and bailiffs face on a daily basis. The data also describes the emotional roles that judges and bailiffs employ in the courtroom. The judges' emotional roles include tension relievers, order enforcers, and care takers. Bailiffs' emotional roles comprise rule enforcers, toxin handlers, and do gooders. The heart of the analysis explores how judges and bailiffs give sense to defendants when unexpected situations manifest in the courtroom and break sense of defendants who hold incorrect or less favored beliefs about courtroom procedures. The emotional displays and responses of judges, bailiffs, primary defendants (defendants before the judge), and third party defendants (those watching in the audience) enable sensegiving and sensebreaking to occur. The emotion cycles allow courtroom staff to impact the sensemaking process of defendants in a fast and efficient manner. Theoretical implications include extensions of emotion cycle research through a consideration of the displays and responses of primary agents, intermediate agents, and primary recipients of emotional displays. Practical implications describe how specific training practices and space for employee discussion could enhance the workplace wellness of judges and bailiffs. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Communication 2012

Unjust customer complaints are increasing, liberal redress policies are becoming more commonplace, and front line employees are expected to smile and just deal with fictitious complaints with redress and a sincere smile.  Is this justly so? This research helps to fill the current gaps in complaint, justice, and emotional labor research by empirically examining employee perceptions of perceived opportunistic versus perceived legitimate complaints.       This research completed one hotel and one restaurant study using  a 2 x 2 between-subjects experimental design to examine complaint type (opportunistic/ legitimate) and perceived organizational support (high/low).   Data was collected from a large reputable market research firm. Results find that employees from both studies experience statistically significantly lower perceptions of procedural, interactional, and distributive justice when dealing with opportunistic as opposed to legitimate complaints.  Perceptions of distributive justice statistically significantly increased employee\'s emotive effort and emotional dissonance.  Additionally, for all of the relationships in the hotel study and with distributive justice in the restaurant study, perceived organizational support had no significant effect on employee perceptions of justice or emotional dissonance or effort.   Managerial implications of employee justice perceptions and customer complaint policies are discussed. / Ph. D.

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The literature regarding organizations, labor control, and emotional labor suggests that the labor process within the service sector is fundamentally different from that of the manufacturing sector because the incorporation of a customer into the labor process necessitates an additional type of labor — namely, emotional labor — to facilitate the interaction. This study demonstrates that emotiona1labor is both heterogenous and dynamic. It is influenced not only by the specific service occupation under investigation, but also by the organizational context in which it is simultaneously manufactured and constrained. Emotional labor enactment varies between organizational contexts, among cashiers employed at the same store, and within the individual. Cashiers are able to shift between six distinct emotional labor enactment styles to accomplish their work: the conversationalist, the minimalist, the pretender, the avoider, the confronter, and the contender. This study also demonstrates that as the size of grocery establishments increase, labor control systems are altered to accommodate the growth which, in turn, influences emotional labor . Increasing formalization of emotional labor directives not only promotes uniformity but can also generate variation in the form of cashier resistance. Emotional labor commitment can be enhanced if the labor control system fosters internalization of organizational expectations among the cashiers. Importantly, potential negative effects of emotional labor can be lessened if strategies for handling the competing and oftentimes contradictory demands are effectively disseminated. / Master of Science

The term “social competence” is widely used by organizations in job advertisements, despite the problems of making a unified definition of it. The purpose of this study is to investigate which features the organizations require, why organizations require them and how the assessment is implemented for recruitment. To answer the purpose of this study, eight qualitative interviews conducted with recruiters from four different staffing agencies. Further a literature study was performed to define the concept of “social competence” and its meaning, in order to later connect this to the result. Based on this, the term “social competence” will be further studied using emotional labor and social capital. From the results, it was found that the organizations' demands for features in terms of “social competence” was communication, teamwork, commitment and flexibility. It was also found that the required social features could be linked to the definitions developed through the literature study.

Emotional labor is the unpaid and often unnoticed emotion work that foremost women carry out, not only in the home life but at the workplace as well. Emotional labor is highly associated with femininity according to previous research and often involves being attentive to others, creating a good ambiance, and to be warm and caring. From previous studies, it is implied that emotional labor creates stress as women often have to manage other people’s emotions as well as their own and that there is an expectancy on women to do so. What is implied from those circumstances in relation to work life is that the opportunities for women to climb the work ladder decreases, as women perform emotional labor in addition to, or instead of, their regular work tasks. There is no previous research to be found on what type of impact emotional labor has on women in leading positions, or on female leaders in the private sector in Sweden. The main purpose of the thesis is to find how emotional labor impacts female leaders in their leadership role and to find how widespread emotional labor is amongst companies in the Swedish private sector. We aim to shed light on the often unnoticed, or invisible, emotion work foremost women perform in their workplaces, which leads to the research question: What impact does emotional labor have on women in their leadership role? The theoretical framework is mainly based on previous research on emotional labor and leadership theories. Carefully chosen theories on expectations in male and female leadership are added to broaden the background. Further, facts on gender equality are provided as support. The chosen research method for the thesis is qualitative with an exploratory research design and an inductive approach. In line with the chosen method, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants from a purposive, homogeneous sampling. The interviews were further transcribed, analyzed and presented through a thematic analysis. The key findings imply that emotional labor is highly present among women in leadership positions. The findings imply that emotional labor is expected from women to perform, although not outspoken. Further, the findings imply that there is different expectations on leadership and leadership style from the employees, the board and the leaders themselves. With an expectancy from employees to lead with an emotional leadership, an expectancy from the board to lead to make results and a confusion in their own leadership, it will lead to stress in the leaders too. The conclusion of the thesis is: Women are affected by emotional labor in their leadership role as they feel an obligation to perform it, while still not doing it too much since that would, according to expectations from society, present them as poor leaders. If they, on the other hand, do not perform any emotional labor at all, they are not considered to be team players.