Reacting to the demands of service work: emotional resistance in the Coaching Inn Company |
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Authors: | Peter John Sandiford Diane Seymour |
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Affiliation: | 1. Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University , Aytoun Street, Manchester, M1 3GH, UK p.sandiford@mmu.ac.uk;3. Business School, Oxford Brookes University , Oxford, UK |
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Abstract: | This paper discusses employee resistance to the emotional labour of face-to-face service work. It identifies a difficulty with the extension of the concept of resistance from the more traditional manufacturing industries to service work, asking how far apparently resistant behaviours can sensibly be conceptualised as a challenge to management control of the labour process. This difficulty is explored through a discussion of data drawn from ethnographic research into a chain of public houses. Various forms of resistant behaviour are identified, although the precise nature of this resistance is often blurred by the complex relations between employee, management and customer. |
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Keywords: | emotional labour resistance public houses service work |
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