Journal of Organisational Studies and Innovation
Vol. 1, no.2, Autumn, 2014
Customers or learners? The impact of changes in the UK higher education sector on employee emotion management
Rachel Morgan
Brunel University

Abstract: Using an exploratory qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with 12 academics and administrators, this paper explores the role of emotions in the context of academia. Results demonstrate that both academics and administrators are aware of displaying emotions and see emotional labour as a part of their job roles. Academics exhibit increased negative emotions due to associating recent changes in higher education (HE), for example increased bureaucracy, with lack of trust in their professional judgement. In addition, they also experience increased fragmentation and isolation in colleague relationships that result in, documented in previous studies, negative effects associated with emotional labour such as burnout.
On the other hand, administrators welcome increased bureaucratic procedures, as it reduces their exposure to negative emotions associated with students’ complaints and partially removes responsibility from an individual person for the outcome of interactions. For them it often results in improved colleague relations. Thus, thearticle proposes that personal commitment to work increases negative effects associated with emotional labour by exploring emotions exhibited by academics and administrators in a higher education setting. Furthermore, findings suggest that implementation of emotion management training, as well as procedures to improve employee relations are required to reduce negative effects of emotional labour such as burnout exhibited by employees within the sector.

Keywords: emotional labour, emotions, UK, higher education, commitment.