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This chapter describes the role of service employees’ motives for emotion regulation in interactions with customers. To date, there has been little research and theoretical work on motives for emotion regulation in service work. The reason for this may lie in the fact that there is an implicit general assumption that employees regulate their emotions in customer interactions because of display rules given by the organization. We argue that service employees have more motives for emotion regulation than adhering to display rules. We propose that three fundamental motive categories which are relevant for general emotion regulation are also relevant in the service work context. Moreover, we argue that the different motive categories are important antecedents for the further emotion regulation process. We propose that depending on the motive category different emotion regulation strategies are used as well as moderating effects of the motives with an impact on the consequences of emotion regulation such as well-being. The chapter concludes by pointing to practical implications.

Purpose: Work-related emotional exposure is a fundamental job characteristic in all kinds of service jobs from sales to law enforcement and corrections and from human services (nursing, counseling) to legal services. But formalized job descriptions are surprisingly silent about the emotional issues accompanying the jobs and roles service workers perform. This is surprising because formalized job descriptions are the foundation of job design, HR, and leadership practices that positively affect employee, customer, and organizational outcomes. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: This is a theory paper and review. To help clarify the emotional labor issues service employees confront, we explicate a model of emotional labor based on the attributes of jobs, roles, and professionalism. Findings: We define emotional labor as service work that exposes those who do such work to interactions with others that can arouse negative emotions. We propose that, while employing organizations define their jobs and employees craft their larger roles, professional norms and values also are a foundation for their emotional labor. Research Implications: We integrate this work-focused emotional labor model into the larger context in which such work occurs via theory and research on organizational climate. We suggest future research on this approach to understanding the antecedents and consequences of emotional labor work. We summarize the major research ideas of what should be the focus of such research and provide a hint about what an emotional labor climate scale might look like based on these ideas. Practical Implications: This chapter offers practical advice to HR managers about how to improve emotional labor. Social Implications: Better management of emotional labor can reduce employee stress and increase employee well-being. Originality/Value: This chapter develops an original model of emotional labor.

Workplace temporalities are being reshaped under globalization. Some scholars argue that work time is becoming more flexible, de-territorializing, and even disappearing. I provide an alternative picture of what is happening to work time by focusing on the customer service call center industry in India. Through case studies of three firms, and interviews with 80 employees, managers, and officials, I show how this industry involves a “reversal” of work time in which organizations and their employees shift their schedules entirely to the night. Rather than liberation from time, workers experience a hyper-management, rigidification, and re-territorialization of temporalities. This temporal order pervades both the physical and virtual tasks of the job, and has consequences for workers’ health, families, future careers, and the wider community of New Delhi. I argue that this trend is prompted by capital mobility within the information economy, expansion of the service sector, and global inequalities of time, and is reflective of an emerging stratification of employment temporalities across lines of the Global North and South.

Emotion work benefits service organizations, but high emotion-workloads lead to negative consequences for employees. We examined differences between employees highly competent in emotion work (Experts) and those who are less competent (Novices). We found that Novices conformed to organizational level display rules, used simple strategies and felt overwhelmed by their emotion-workload. In contrast, Experts followed interaction level display rules, used proactive strategies, and found emotion work to be effortless. This suggests that emotion work competence can act as a firewall buffering employees from negative consequences. Hospitality organizations can benefit from encouraging employees to increase their emotion work competence.

This chapter investigated tactics used by customer service employees in performing emotion work during their interactions with customers and those internal to organizations. Based on a qualitative study in the hospitality industry, I discovered that customer service employees used a range of tactics that impact different phases of the emotion regulation process in order to facilitate emotion work. One group of tactics was directed towards the work context while the other was self-directed in an attempt to regulate the experience and expression of emotion. Taken together these two groups of tactics provide a holistic portrayal of the range of tactics used by customer service employees in performing emotion work.

This chapter discusses hurdles posed to a medium-sized public university library in the Midwest when they were asked by their Dean to create a faculty workload worksheet, rationale, and ultimately a set of guidelines. Faculty in other departments compute their loads using formulas based on course loads. How many hours they spend in the classroom, and how many hours they spend preparing for that time in the classroom are factored into the course loads expected for a full teaching load, with release granted in course load equivalents for research and/or service. Because librarian work does not typically involve teaching credit-bearing courses, a major challenge to constructing guidelines is equating library work with course loads. Calculating faculty workload for librarians commensurate with other faculty on campus is often complicated. To all of these challenges add the unique issues that are faced by the technical services (TS) librarian. TS work supports instruction and research but may involve little classroom contact with students, so it has even less resemblance to classroom instruction than other librarian work has. TS librarians spend their time in a wide variety of tasks. Exactly how to formulate this time in accordance with the rules for other departmental faculty is a challenge. The specific situation at this university added more complications as there was also a campus-wide mandate to ensure all workload policies are consistent and equitable.

Work participation and work facilitation represent basic human rights for everyone. Work represents an important platform for welfare and well-being, but compared to the general workforce in Norway, persons with cognitive disabilities are severely under-represented. When workplaces locked down under the first COVID-19 outbreak spring 2020, some people were made redundant whilst many continued their work from home. The lockdown affected persons with cognitive disabilities through lockdown of workplaces, vocational training centres and even day activity centres. The scheme of working from home was not as obvious or facilitated for this group, as for other employees. When also visits were banned and common areas for socialisation were locked down, the consequences of these lockdowns were exacerbated. In this chapter we have examined and discussed the COVID-19 restrictions in Norway and how they affected the basic human rights of persons with cognitive disabilities, and also how such rights can be promoted through legislation, governance and service provision.

In this chapter, we summarize and build on the current state of the customer mistreatment literature in an effort to further future research on this topic. First, we detail the four primary conceptualizations of customer mistreatment. Second, we present a multilevel model of customer mistreatment, which distinguishes between the unfolding processes at the individual employee level and the service encounter level. In particular, we consider the antecedents and outcomes unique to each level of analysis as well as mediators and moderators. Finally, we discuss important methodological concerns and recommendations for future research.

Academic libraries develop strategic plans as instruments for grounding operational work in shared vision and measurable goals. The authors of this chapter test the assumption that technical services work is often absent in library strategic plans, even if that work is an assumed component. They explore the representation of technical services through a rich content analysis of Association of Research Libraries member strategic plans to reveal key themes and use the results as a tool to more broadly develop a set of guiding principles for technical services professionals in the 21st century. To provide valuable and relevant services to users, technical services professionals must develop bold and sustainable guiding principles informed by both their representation in their libraries' strategic plans and emerging trends in academic libraries.