REGULATING AFFECTIVE LABOR: COMMUNICATION SKILLS TRAINING IN THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

Abstract

This paper assesses the significance of a communication skills training program at a hospital in New York City. Qualitative data – including interviews and observations – are taken from an evaluation of the training program. Rather than focus on outcomes, we analyze the political and economic context that produced this course and how the instructor, curriculum, and participants enacted and transformed it. The course took ubiquitous training strategies – such as flexibility, responsibility, and teamwork – and applied them to the specific process of health care work; a process that our evidence suggests is better understood using the concept of affective labor, as opposed to skills, knowledge work, or emotional labor. The course was, we conclude, an attempt to regulate affective labor, in the sense that regulation simultaneously responds to and produces instability.

Citation

Ducey, A.M., Gautney, H. and Wetzel, D. (2003), "REGULATING AFFECTIVE LABOR: COMMUNICATION SKILLS TRAINING IN THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY", Bills, D.B. (Ed.) The Sociology of Job Training (Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 49-72. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-2833(03)12003-1