Emotions Online: Exploring Knowledge Workers’ Emotional Labour in a Digital Context in an Agile IT Company

IF 1.1 Q3 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Human Arenas Pub Date : 2023-10-04 DOI:10.1007/s42087-023-00364-4

Sabina Pultz, Katia Dupret

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract Digital technologies and new ways of organising transform the way we experience work. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the role of digital emotional labour (EL) among knowledge workers. We investigate the EL involved in digital communication practices among co-located knowledge workers employed in an agile IT-consultancy firm with a relatively flat hierarchy. Based on rich qualitative data, we analyse how the specific socio-material infrastructures of a democratic communication technology called ‘Flowdock’ give rise to EL (Hochschild in American Journal of Sociology, 85 (3), 551–575, 1979, University of California Press , 1983). The study contributes theoretically by developing work on EL in a digital context by engaging with Oudshoorn’s ( Sociology of Health & Illness, 31 (3), 390–405, 2009) term ‘digital proximity’. This implies opening up EL to a more dynamic and situated approach and contributing to the organisational research scrutinising the EL of backstage professionals. The paper concludes that online communication creates new demands of managing emotions in relation to 4 themes key to agile organising: (1) working as whole persons, (2) creating partnerships, (3) unclear decision-making and lastly (4) informal power dynamics. We discuss implications of the overall finding that knowledge workers face increased demands mixing social and technical skills.

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在线情绪:探索敏捷IT公司数字化背景下知识型员工的情绪劳动

数字技术和新的组织方式改变了我们体验工作的方式。本文旨在帮助我们理解数字情绪劳动(EL)在知识型员工中的作用。我们研究了在一个层次结构相对平坦的敏捷it咨询公司工作的同地知识员工在数字通信实践中所涉及的EL。基于丰富的定性数据，我们分析了被称为“Flowdock”的民主通信技术的特定社会物质基础设施如何产生EL (Hochschild在《美国社会学杂志》，85(3)，551-575,1979;加州大学出版社，1983)。该研究通过与Oudshoorn的《健康社会学》(Sociology of Health &疾病，31(3)，390-405,2009)术语“数字接近”。这就意味着要开放学习语言，采用一种更加动态和情境化的方法，并为审查后台专业人员学习语言的组织研究做出贡献。本文的结论是，在线交流创造了与敏捷组织关键的4个主题相关的管理情绪的新需求:(1)作为整体工作，(2)建立伙伴关系，(3)不明确的决策，最后(4)非正式的权力动态。我们讨论了知识工作者面临社会技能和技术技能混合需求增加的总体发现的含义。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Human Arenas Social Sciences-Social Sciences (miscellaneous)

CiteScore

2.80

自引率

23.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： The aim of this journal concerns the interdisciplinary study of higher psychological functions (as topic of a general theory of psyche from the perspective of cultural psychology) in human goal-oriented liminal phenomena in ordinary and extraordinary life conditions. The journal is organized around topics and arenas of human activity, rather than the traditional boundaries of academic disciplines. It will explore human arenas from the point of view of historical foundations, methodology, epistemology, and the intersection of disciplines. Human Arenas promotes an innovative mix of theoretical and empirical studies, as well as qualitative and quantitative approaches based on “small data,” that is, the analysis of crucial and meaningful data, rather than the inductive accumulation of large empirical “evidence.”