Weinberg, J. orcid.org/0000-0001-7395-724X (2021) Emotional labour and occupational wellbeing in political office. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 23 (3). pp. 430-450. ISSN 1369-1481
Abstract
Like many public service workers, politicians must manage the emotions of others as well as themselves in order to facilitate cooperation or goal accomplishment. Coined by Arlie Hochschild, this type of work is known as emotional labour. This article analyses a unique data set on the emotional labour and occupational wellbeing of over 500 elected politicians in the United Kingdom to understand how this important feature of public service plays out in political office. On one hand, all three facets of emotional labour (emotion work, personal efficacy, and false-face acting) are found to be prevalent among elected politicians, with self-reported levels of emotional labour differing among men and women. On the other hand, emotion work and personal efficacy appear to improve job satisfaction and occupational pride among politicians, but false-face acting increases symptoms of occupational burnout. These findings raise important questions about the nature of political institutions and the sustainability of political work.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page. |
Keywords: | emotional labour; gender; occupational wellbeing; parliament; political work; politicians |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Leverhulme Trust ECF-2019-023 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Oct 2020 06:55 |
Last Modified: | 04 Feb 2022 16:17 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/1369148120959044 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:166876 |