Emotional Management in the Workplace of the Spanish Population. Quantitative Analysis through the Construction of an Emotional Quality Index at Work and its Link to Social Structure

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.28939/iam.debats-en.2021-3

Abstract

The organisation of work, located in the post-Fordist paradigm, stresses the emotional aspects of employee-client interaction processes. This emphasis arises from the shift in the productive structure towards growth in service activities in which interpersonal relationships are key factors. In this "new culture", the organisation is conceived as a ‘sentient’ environment and emotional work
captures the interest of researchers and social scientists who analyse the role played by emotions
in occupations and organisational culture (Zapf, 2002, Grandey 2000, 2015, Seymour and Sandiford
2005, Bolton 2000, Wharton, 2009, Totterdell, and Holman, 2003). Most related research has focused on qualitative case studies of workers in the service sector (Steinberg and Figart, 1999) — an approach that limits the inferences one can make and hinders one in linking findings to the social
structure. The aim of our research is to expand this field of analysis and explore the link between emotional management and social structure. That is why we used a quantitative methodology, for which purpose we built an Emotional Quality Index in the Workplace (EQIW), allowing us to measure the emotional quality of workers in Spain and analyse their relationship with the three
key structural variables: social class; occupation; gender. Here, we used data from the European Working Conditions Survey (2015). The results show that there are significant differences in the emotional management of work by occupation, social class and gender, verifying that there is
indeed a link between the EQIW and the social structure.

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Author Biography

María Cascales Mira, Universidad de Sevilla

She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Seville and has been working there as an interim professor in the Department of Sociology since 2010. Her field of research is in the Sociology of Work and the Sociology of Emotions, linked to the social structure. Her latest publications have been La calidad intrínseca del trabajo y su vinculación con las lógicas laborales [The Intrinsic Quality of Work and its Link to Labour Policies] (2021) in Revista Española de Sociología, and New Model for Measuring Job Quality: Developing an European Intrinsic Job Quality Index (2021) in the journal Social Indicators Research. She is a member of the Studies on the Quality of European Societies (ECALSE)
and took part in the publication of the book The Quality of European Societies: A Compilation of Composite Indicators, writing the chapter “Job Quality” (Springer, 2019). Cascales has participated in the INCASI network (International Network for Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities), funded by the European Commission, through which she has spent several research stays in Latin America. She is currently taking part in the research project "Dynamics of Social Mobility in Spain" (DINAMOS), which is linked to the aforementioned INCASI project.

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Published

2021-12-28

How to Cite

Cascales Mira, M. (2021) “Emotional Management in the Workplace of the Spanish Population. Quantitative Analysis through the Construction of an Emotional Quality Index at Work and its Link to Social Structure”, Debats. Journal on culture, power and society, pp. 43–54. doi: 10.28939/iam.debats-en.2021-3.

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SPECIAL ISSUE 1