MANAGING EMOTIONAL LABOUR IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
We are pleased to present this important PMM collection on managing emotional labour. We put this collection together to highlight the importance of emotions in public sector work, as a counterbalance to more visible debates - e.g. on economy, efficiency, effectiveness and, more recently, of risk and resilience. For us, emotions have been an undercurrent of all these debates and may help explain why some of the public sector reforms or managerial practices may not work as designed. We hope to raise the profile of emotional labour in public sector work, both on the front line (through the work of street-level bureaucrats, e.g. doctors and nurses) and behind the public services’ visibility line (e.g. accountancy work). The articles in this PMM collection present insights from four corners of the globe, which makes for an invaluable learning pack and a chance to broaden familiar perspectives on people management in the public sector. It offers policy-makers the opportunity to consider emotional labour as an effect of efficiency-maximizing policies (see Wankhade (2021)), as well as to consider and build slack for emotional labour required in ethical decision-making during crises such as the recent global pandemic. The latter, prompted by Allen & Macaulay (2021), is also a lesson for managers who, noting the cognitive processes behind emotional labour (Gamage, 2021) can adopt supportive practices - see Henderson and Borry (2020) and Farr-Wharton et al. (2021), or to exercise caution towards role extensions - see Needham et al. (2021). Finally, the article by McCaffry and Chríodáin (2021) speaks to UK and international chartered accountancy bodies, as well as to accountants themselves, about developing authentic stewardship in public sector accounting through more open use and management of emotional labour. It has been an honour for us, as editors, to make space for these conversations and we shall endeavour to keep them going, to impact theory as well as practice.
Edited by
Adina Dudau(University of Glasgow, UK)
Yvonne Brunetto(Southern Cross University, Australia)