Emotional & Aesthetic Labour

'Looking good and subtitle fine Click to edit Mastersoundingstyle

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Aesthetic Labour

First conceived by Warhurst et al. (2000)

refers to employees bodies being organizationally produced or made up to embody the desired aesthetic of the organization and intended to provide for organizational benefit. Embodied capacities and attributes are, to some extent, possessed by workers at the point of entry into employment. ... And then....

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Aesthetic Labour
Employers

then...

mobilize, develop, and commodify these embodied dispositions through processes of recruitment, selection, training and management, transforming them into skills which are geared towards producing a style of service encounter that appeals to the senses of the customer

(Nickson et al. 2001).

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The Age Of Look And Feel

Employee

appearance is an integral feature of this economy

Bolton (2000), suggests that...

If emotions have been discovered to be here, there and everywhere in the workplace the same might now be said for aesthetics Postrell (2003 p.127) argues that

(see Felstead et al. 2005: p.7896). we are at a tipping point into an aesthetic economy, heralding the age of look and feel. ...

When style is strategy, how employees look can be as much a part of the atmosphere [of 3/26/12 companies] as the grain of the furniture or the

Employee appearance
Long

an important consideration for employers....

C16th...
Society of Jesus selected priests with a pleasing manner of speech and verbal facility, and also good appearance in the absence of any notable ugliness, disfigurement or deformity

(Hopfl 2000, p.2034).

C19th...
Model Banker - senior banker described as being handsome with hazel eyes, aquiline nose, iron-grey hair, firm moustache, oval 3/26/12

Not Just Good Looking The Right Look

Aesthetic

labour is a key feature of employees wage effort bargaining.

Like emotional labour different looks can be required of employees throughout their aesthetic labouring by different organisations who are targeting different market segments

(Hochschild 1983, Pettinger 2004 Warhurst

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Is Employee Appearance Critical?

2004

survey of UK retail employers revealed:

90 per cent rated employee appearance as critical or important in recruitment and selection. 61 per cent offered training in dress sense and style, 56 per cent provided other appearance training including in employee body language
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Thoughts...????
Grugulis

et al. (2004)

"there is an increasing tendency for organisations to manage the way their employees feel and look as well as the way they behave, so that work is emotional and aesthetic as well as (or instead of) productive
(Hochschild, 1983; Macdonald and Sirianni, 1996; Warhurst and Nickson, 2001).

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Embodiment
in

the emotional labour literature embodiment is continually debated:

i.e. Hochschilds (1983: 7) core definition of emotional labour as: the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display. Aesthetic labour showcase embodiment, revealing how employee appearance, not just feelings, are organizationally appropriated, transmuted and controlled for commercial benefit.
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Personal Characteristics
In

customer-facing occupations employers stressing the importance of prospective employees' personal characteristics

Some now specify personal characteristics in lists of skills they require Thompson et al., 2001
This development is particularly true of interactive services, such as retailing, where recruitment and training both focus on the emotions and aesthetics of the labour force deployed to deliver the service

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What Makes The Service Better?

Nickson

et al., 2001 p.7

In the style labour market of fashionable hotels and bars the appearance, deportment, accents and general stylishness of the bartender, waitress or retail assistant are part of what makes the service being offered trendy and upmarket

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Significance of this practice?

(Warhurst

and Nickson, 2001, p.14).

XYZ company are

... looking for people who are "passionate, stylish, confident, tasty, clever, successful and well-travelled

????

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What are the consequences of this trend? The personnel manager of a hotel was

implementing changes in working practices aimed at the reception staff, but complained: 'they just won't smile.'

There are issues here around the extent to which attributes are seen as separate from the person and as skills to be developed.

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Look Good And Sound Right

Nickson

et al., 2001

Staff have to look good and sound right and Recruitment and selection processes must try to ensure that they do

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Other Service Sectors

But

it is not only in this front of house environment that grooming, dress sense, deportment, manner, tone and accent of voice and shape and size of body become vital...

Nickson et al., 2001 p8.

Workplaces

as diverse as

call centres, training consultants, investment banks accountants

all

recruit, train and promote staff on their 3/26/12

Right Image Vs. Right Skills.

If

an employer is essentially looking for someone who will project the right image.... many people does this rule out, irrespective of the skills they possess???

How

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Personality Training?
Many

of these characteristics, are open to development and improvement through instruction. possession is a new facet of what it can mean to be skilled"

Their

Warhurst and Nickson (2001) Grugulis et al., (2004, p.7)

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Managers may seek to control employees...

Language Clothing Body

posture, Length of their skirts Hairstyles, Weight Size of bust, hips, thighs... Makeup Perfume Way that they shave (both faces and legs), Jewellery 3/26/12 Shoes

Employee Perspectives
Employees

can and do resist, misbehave ignore these instructions, enthuse, co-operate comply with them
(Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999; Paules, 1991).

Or...

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Re-shaping Emotions
In

emotional and aesthetic labour, employees feelings and appearance are turned into commodities and re-shaped to fit their employers notions of what is desirable

(Putnam and Mumby, 1993; Thompson and McHugh, 2002).

Such detailed demands suggest that it is not only the changing definition of skill that is problematic but the site of its control... ?

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This process can....

Grugulis

et al., 2004, pp7-8) ...

1.

Be enjoyed by employees and may equip them with skills that advantage them both in and out of the workplace

(Leidner, 1993; Nickson et al., 2001).

2.

Lead to exhaustion, burnout

(Hochschild, 1983; Kunda, 1992),

3.

Cause an inability to accept or engage with emotions in the private sphere

(Casey, 1995) 3/26/12

4.

Cause high levels of turnover

Grugulis et al. (2004) conclude...

"at rock bottom, the real personal and transferable skills required for preferential employment are those of whiteness, maleness and traditional middle-class"

(Ainley 1994, p. 80), and ...

the particular skills in personal presentation, selfconfidence, grooming, deportment and accent that Glaswegian service sector employers are seeking are liable to be linked to the parental social class, and family and educational background of the job applicants"

(Nickson et al. (2003 p. 10).

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References:
Ackroyd,

S. and Thompson, P. (1999) Organizational Misbehaviour, London: Sage. Ainley, P. (1994). Degrees of Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart. Anderson-Gough, F., Grey, 3/26/12

References (2)
Kunda,

G. (1992) Engineering Culture: control and commitment in a High-Tech corporation, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Leidner, R. (1993) Fast Food, Fast Talk: service work and the routinization of everyday life Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Macdonald, C.L. (1996) Shadow mothers: nannies, au pairs, and invisible work in Macdonald, C.L. and Sirianni, C. (eds.) Working in the Service Society Philadelphia: 3/26/12 Temple University Press.

References (3)
Paules,

G.F. (1991) Dishing it Out: power and resistance among waitresses in a New Jersey restaurant, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Putnam, L. and Mumby, D.K. (1993) Organisations, emotions and the myth of rationality in Fineman, S. (ed.) Emotion in Organisations London: Sage. Thompson, P. and McHugh, D. (2002) Work Organisations: a critical introduction 3rd edition Basingstoke: Palgrave. Thompson, P., Warhurst, C. and Callaghan, G. 3/26/12 (2001) Ignorant Theory and Knowledgeable