Emotions and Emotional Labor at Worker-Owned Businesses: Deep Acting, Surface Acting, and Genuine Emotions

Abstract

Members of worker cooperatives—organizations collectively owned and democratically run by their workers—report substantial differences in how they can or must perform various emotions, compared with previous work at conventional, hierarchical organizations. First, some emotions not allowed in conventional workplaces are fully permitted at worker cooperatives, including negative emotions, like anger, but also positive emotions, like enthusiasm. In contrast, other emotions must be displayed, even if insincere. Sometimes, these displays are accomplished through surface acting, like pretending to happily accept the slow pace of committee-led change. Other times, through deep acting, members internalized new emotional reactions, such as pride, instead of resentment, when helping coworkers even after their own shifts had ended.

Keywords::

• sociology of emotions
• organizations, occupations, and work
• labor and labor movements

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant (SBR-9801948). The author wishes to thank the editors, the reviewers, and especially Joyce Rothschild for their help on earlier drafts of this manuscript. The author also thanks Mark C. Suchman, Laurie B. Edelman, Jane Collins, Howard S. Erlanger, and Elizabeth Mertz for their support on the early stages of this project. Most importantly, the author is indebted to all the interviewees who participated in this project, making it possible.

NOTES

Notes

¹ Although I did look for contrasts between the U.S. site and the U.K. site, as well as and southern U.K. sites, I did not identify any.

² At the editors' request, I reviewed the data for additional negative comments about worker cooperatives. I found very few and these were only minor themes. Therefore, they were not discussed.