The neoliberal university has transformed professors into front-line workers and their students into consumers of higher learning. Research has shown there is a positive correlation between a student’s perception of supportive faculty and the completion of a degree. Professors are expected to support their students and to engage in emotional labour, labour that tends to be invisible and, thus, often unrewarded for faculty members. An online survey of professors - contract, tenure-track and tenure at three southwestern Ontario universities - indicates that many professors perform affective work as they mediate increasing institutional and student demands on their time and emotions. Data, from the survey and semi-structured interviews, highlights how emotional labour is not just about meeting student expectations, but also about dealing with job insecurity and institutional pressure to provide an educational product where the emphasis is on student satisfaction. The result is that many professors experience high levels of stress and burnout. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This study examines the workloads of professors at three Ontario universities. Through the use of an online survey and in-depth interviews, the working conditions of professors are revealed as well as the emotional labour professors perform in order to cope with the intensity of both institutional and student demands. It is hoped that these findings would be useful to faculty associations to better working conditions through contract negotiations and to increase public awareness of the changing and challenging environment of academia.

This thesis explores mental health nurses’ and midwives’ experiences of supervision. The thesis aims to create a partial and situated understanding of the numerous factors which contribute to practitioners’ experiences of supervision. In particular the thesis investigates the disciplinary context within which supervision takes place, moving from the experiences of individual practitioners to compare and contrast supervision within two distinct professional disciplines which have common areas of interest. Existing research on the topic of supervision in mental health nursing and midwifery tends to reify the concept of supervision. Supervision is assumed to be beneficial, and there is a focus on investigating the effects of supervision without an accompanying understanding of why, how, where and by whom supervision is done. In this thesis, ‘supervision’ is critically conceptualised as indicating a cluster of context-specific practices, and the investigation of supervision is located with the practitioner’s understandings and experiences. The theoretical perspective of the thesis is informed by social constructionism, and ‘experience’ is conceptualised as communicated through meaning-making narratives. The experiences of the study participants were accessed through the collection of data in the form of narratives. Sixteen participants were recruited, comprising eight mental health nurses and eight midwives. Each participant was interviewed once, using a semi-structured interview format. The analysis was influenced by the theories of Gee (1991), Bruner (1986) and Ricoeur (1983/1984), and employed a narrative approach in which the unique meaning-making qualities of narrative were used to interpret the data. The analysis paid close attention to the process of fragmentation and configuration of the data, and produced four composite stories which presented the findings in a holistic and contextualised form. Two themes were identified from the findings: Supervision and Emotions, and Supervision and The Profession, and these were discussed in the light of the two professional contexts explored, and with reference to supervision as an exercise of power. The theme of Emotions recognises the integral role played by emotions in both clinical practice and supervision, and conceptualises supervision and the organisational context as emotional ecologies. Supervision can be constructed as a special emotional ecology with its own feeling rules, and this can both benefit and harm the practitioner. The theme of The Profession responds to the importance of the professional context of supervision practices, and the role of discourses about professional identity and status in determining how supervision is done and with what aim. Comparing supervision practices within two different disciplinary contexts enabled this thesis to challenge tropes about supervision. Supervision cannot be assumed to be either ‘good’ or ‘punitive’, and practices are constructed in the light of particular aims and expectations. This thesis also makes the methodological argument that research into supervision must be politicised and theorised and accommodate contextualised complexity. To simplify or decontextualise the exploration of supervision is to lose the details of practice which make supervision what it is. Supervision is a complex process, enmeshed in its context, and may be constructed to serve different purposes.

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The care and welfare of laboratory animals born, nurtured and experimented upon within a research facility is the primary function for animal technologists. While discharging these responsibilities the emotional needs of the carers require consideration, balancing their perceptions of animal care against the purpose for which the animals exist. As little published information is available on the emotional challenges faced by UK animal technologists, this thesis redresses the balance, exploring the subject in detail through qualitative and quantitative methods. Emotional dissonance, often expressed as felt emotion versus enacted emotion, is a negative output from Emotional Labour. Animal technologists operate in a service environment and the results demonstrate that they ‘act’ under duress and self-regulate which emotions to display. Using exploratory factor analysis the results illustrate two key drivers on felt and enacted emotions. These include internal elements associated with daily tasks elements such as euthanasia and external factors such as budgets over which they have little or no control. Emotional dissonance is shown to occur within various employment grades. Resultant emotions include, guilt, shame and sadness. These can lead to affects upon job satisfaction propagating feelings of workplace alienation, isolation and fear, particularly from antivivisectionist organisations. When organisational support was not forthcoming or lacked empathy, individuals deployed various coping methods. This demonstrates both management and organisational implications including gender, educational attainment and whether a person has staff supervision responsibilities. Observations drawn through both qualitative and quantitative research clearly signpost a spectrum of indicators of emotional dissonance leading to individual, managerial and organisational theoretical implications. In doing so, emotion knowledge has been increased on a previously under researched occupational sector existing within a largely secretive environment. The research on a hitherto largely unknown employment grouping provides insights that had previously existed only mainly in anecdotal ways. The results provide strong evidence to further support existing research demonstrating how roles with significant emotional components directly impact upon individuals and the organisations that employ them.

Very little has been done to define the process of clinical learning in Malawi and yet anecdotal observations reveal that it is more challenging than classroom teaching and learning. This set the impetus for this hermeneutic phenomenological study, the aim being to gain an understanding of the nature of the clinical learning experience for undergraduate students in Malawi and to examine their clinical experiences against some experiential learning models (Kolb 1984; Jarvis et al 1998). The study setting was Kamuzu College of Nursing (KCN) and the sample was selected purposively and consisted of 30 undergraduate students who were recruited through volunteering. Conversational interviews were conducted to obtain students’ accounts of their clinical learning experience and an eclectic framework guided the phenomenological analysis. The study raises issues which relate to nursing education and nursing practice in Malawi. From an experiential learning perspective, the study reveals that clinical learning for KCN students is largely non-reflective. The study primarily reveals that the clinical learning experience is enormously challenging and stressful due to structural problems prevalent in the clinical learning environment (CLE). In some clinical settings the CLE appears hostile and oppressive due to negative attitudes which some of the clinical staff display towards KCN students. Consequently, students’ accounts depict emotionally charged situations which confront them and this illustrates that clinical learning for KCN students is an experience suffused with emotions. In literature issues on emotions are commonly discussed under emotional labour (Hochschild 1983) and I used the concept as a basis for my pre-understandings and interpreted the students’ accounts of their clinical learning experience against such a conceptual framework. What resonated from their narratives was the depth of the emotion work they engage in. This enabled me to arrive at a new and unique conceptualisation of clinical learning redefined in terms of emotional labour within the perspective of nurse learning in Africa. The findings are a unique contribution to the literature on emotions and provide essential feedback which forms the basis for improving clinical learning in Malawi.

This thesis addresses a neglected aspect in the emotional labour literature by seeking to identify the impact of societal culture on how service workers perform emotional labour and its effect on their wellbeing, in terms of the emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation dimensions of burnout. Its original contribution lies in using respondents residing in two contrasting cultures, the Philippines and Australia. The research instrument brings together the INDCOL survey, Emotional Labour Scale, Maslach Burnout Inventory, and job autonomy questions from the Job Diagnostic Survey. Data is analysed from 734 surveys completed by guest-contact workers; hypotheses are tested using the independent samples t-test in SPSS. Meaningful results mainly emerge from comparing responses filtered according to how respondents describe themselves on the INDCOL dimensions rather than by their countries of residence, highlighting the importance of identifying individual-level differences within societies rather than relying on overall descriptions of culture, for such comparative purposes. Respondents report higher levels of burnout when using surface-acting more frequently, and lower levels of burnout when using deep-acting more often. Further, they report similar levels of deep-acting and burnout, and those who report high job autonomy also report lower levels of burnout. Higher levels of burnout are reported by individualists who use surface-acting more frequently. The significance of these findings is the emergence of similar results among respondents in the contrasting culture of the Philippines. The final key finding is that respondents who perform high levels of emotional labour and who experience high job autonomy report less depersonalisation in Australia than the Philippines. Overall, these findings support the usefulness of applying culturally sensitive HRD interventions in the Philippines as well as Australia, to increase the ability of service workers to perform sincere emotional labour and replace negative consequences with positive outcomes for workers, customers and hotels.

This doctoral thesis investigates a relatively under-researched aspect of teachers’ emotions: namely, teachers’ emotions towards assessment. It generates a conceptual framework and methodological tool for the investigation into and analysis of teachers’ assessment practice, which consists of three concepts: emotions, emotional rules and emotional labour. Following Nussbaum (2001), emotions are viewed as cognitive, i.e. as evaluative judgements of objects important to a person’s flourishing. Following Turner (2007, 2010), emotions are understood as a generalised symbolic medium exchanged between people within institutions, making positive emotions a desirable resource that enhance a person’s flourishing. The thesis also draws on Hochschild (1983/2003), Zembylas (2005), Theodosius (2008) and Archer (2000), to expand, systematize and operationalize the concepts of emotional rules and labour, which increase the visibility of teachers’ emotions and illustrate how assessment, like teaching, is an “emotional practice” (Hargreaves, 1998). This conceptual frame opens possibilities for further research into the nascent field of teachers’ emotions and assessment. Data was collected through seven focus group interviews with nineteen teachers. The teachers were selected as a purposive sample: committed to their work of enabling learner achievement, engaged in professional development and working in functional schools. A thick description of teachers’ emotions foregrounded three main ‘objects’ of assessment: learner achievement, the assessment practices of marking and giving feedback, and accountability demands. Findings show the identity of committed teachers’ as interdependent with learner achievement: teachers gain positive emotions and the motivation to continue their work when learners do well, but are disappointed and filled with self-doubt when learners do badly. In their assessment practice, committed teachers are often overwhelmed by endless marking, yet continuously strive to make judgements and give feedback in ways that are fair, just and empowering for learners. The “panic accountability” of departmental demands undermines and demeans teachers, generating outrage and alienation. Key claims arising from the research are: 1. Teachers’ emotions occupy a strategic position as an inevitable filter through which all policy aimed at achieving the national project of high learner achievement must pass, so teachers’ emotions towards assessment and accountability have the power to enhance or destabilise learner achievement and are thus a valid concern for educational research, policy and practice. 2. As seen through their emotional rules, committed teachers strive to live up to high ethical ideals and take responsibility not only for learner success but also learner failure. 3. Teachers’ emotional labour makes visible how they strive to fulfil their moral purpose of learner achievement, yet are deeply demoralised by not receiving acknowledgement and respect from education authorities.

The majority of literature on the adult entertainment looks at objectification and subjugation of women. Women’s experiences in such arenas are negotiated through circumstances beyond their immediate control. In fact many find themselves in this profession out of destitution and need. The result of which is an experience that is even more harrowing, and psychologically and physically destructive. Previous research suggest that many women in this profession then find themselves in precarious relations, often turning to drugs and alcohol to deal with the highly negative aspect of the industry. However, what is not that often reported on are those women who decide to explore this profession out of mere curiosity or even as a career choice. This analysis aimed to investigate one area of this industry, namely striptease. With focus on the high-end (a more regulated and lucrative end) of the striptease spectrum, this analysis was aimed at investigating the phenomological experiences of women in this sector. We look at the experiences of four women at one of the more prestigious strip-clubs in Johannesburg, referred to as The Club. This study aimed to provide some insight to why some South African women chose to enter striptease—as not much research has been done in this area. More high-end clubs seemed theoretically the most practical site to investigate such a choice. This study was based qualitatively, with the use of semi-structured interview which were analyzed through thematic content analysis. The results of this study are categorized into three sections and framed from an emotional labour perspective. Firstly, the experiences on these women provide a challenge to the traditional feminism perspective—exposing a dynamic power relation that may suggest that, within the high-end at least, women may experience a sense of liberation. Secondly, this study aimed to expose the emotional laboriousness of enacting a sexualised fantasy that is convincing. It was found that such an enactment requires an intense interplay between what is considered the real self and the embodiment and portrayal the girlfriend experience. Lastly, we look at the psychological defensive dissociation that occurs though this interplay between fantasy and reality. In essence this analysis has shed new light on striptease and has provided many new avenues for future research in South Africa.

The aim of this study was to explore the emotional labour of domestic violence shelter workers. A qualitative approach was used and four professionals were interviewed. The interviewees described that they were expected to provide different types of services which include empowering their clients so that they can survive independently after leaving the shelter. The findings showed that the shelter workers hide or suppress different types of emotions, especially when they are frustrated or emotionally affected by the client's situation. According to the workers, they experienced stress as a consequence of the emotional labour, and they expressed that working in the field of domestic violence had made it difficult for them to trust men. Making a difference in the lives of the clients was described as a source of motivation and help them to cope with the negative aspects of the shelter work. Even though the findings cannot be generalised, the study provides comprehensive information about how emotional labour in this particular context can be perceived. The shelter workers described that the levels of satisfaction they get from helping clients resolve their problems were more significant than the negative consequences of emotional labour.

This thesis explores how the owners of 21 small hotels in a major UK resort perceived and experienced emotionalities surrounding the host-guest relationship, with a particular focus on employment of emotion management. The experiences of the owners of 5 large family hotels and the manager of a large corporate hotel were also captured in this study to provide an additional complementary ‘layer’ of data. I employed narrative inquiry using semi-structured interviews to gain insights into how participants constructed and negotiated the host-guest relationship through emotion management. I was also interested in uncovering the wider emotionalities of contextual influences that might impact on that relationship, such as hoteliers’ motivations and values. Adopting an inductive approach, my research was primarily informed by my interpretation of the concepts of ‘emotion management’ and the ‘host-guest relationship’. Further, and consistent with this cross-disciplinary approach, the lenses of ‘power’ and ‘identity’ enhanced my understanding of research participants’ experiences, particularly since these phenomena themselves play a role in the manifestation of both ‘emotion’ and ‘hospitality’. Whilst emotion management in its pecuniary form, as emotional labour, has been well documented in the corporate hotel sector, its manifestation in the smaller setting has been less clear. What I discovered in this study was that owners of small hotels employ an intriguing mix of emotion management strategies within a range of host roles adopted to establish and manage the boundaries of the host-guest relationship. An over-arching theme that emerged from the study was owners’ concerns about guest suitability, particularly with regard to the ‘dirty work’ and/or ‘risky work’ they could present. A key influencing factor here was that the hotel also constituted the owner’s ‘home.’ For the ‘suitable ‘guest, hoteliers could demonstrate considerable scope for hospitableness through philanthropic and personalized emotion management. Hence what seemed to emerge was an image of the small hotel owner as an autonomous flexible emotion manager, relatively free to engage in human connectedness with the guest and capable of eschewing the strictures of customer sovereignty that can envelop corporate counterparts. Host-guest relationships that emerged generally appeared to satisfy both parties and were often long lasting, even taking on the status of ‘friendships,’ where host and guest engaged in reciprocal appreciation that seemed ‘natural’ and spontaneous.