“Bring yourself to work”: rewriting the feeling rules in “personalized” social work
Journal of Organizational Ethnography
ISSN: 2046-6749
Article publication date: 18 September 2019
Issue publication date: 2 October 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how feeling rules are constructed, experienced and contested within personalised social work practice. It considers how organisations seek to shape practitioners towards certain forms of emotional display in increasingly market-oriented conditions. It contributes to our understanding of the place of “backstage” emotional labour in seeking to shape and direct social work practice.
Design/methodology/approach
A single immersive ethnographic case study of an English social work department was undertaken over a period of six months.
Findings
This paper reveals embedded tensions that emerge when practitioners are caught between traditional bureaucratic function, the incursions of the market and feeling rules of relatability, commitment and creativity.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the scant literature on frontline experiences of personalisation in children’s services and the importance of “backstage” emotional labour for shaping and directing social work practice. Importantly, it considers the complexity of emotional labour within an organisational context, which is neither fully marketised, nor fully welfarised, a position many welfare organisations now find themselves in.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Professor Paul Atkinson for reviewing this paper in advance of submission, Dr Neil Stephens who commented on a very early draft and the University of Birmingham for making the research possible.
Citation
Whitaker, E.M. (2019), "“Bring yourself to work”: rewriting the feeling rules in “personalized” social work", Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 325-338. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-06-2018-0030
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited