When it pays to be friendly: employment relationships and emotional labour in hairstyling (original) (raw)
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The Sociological Review, 2010
This article examines worker-client relationships in hairstyling. Data are drawn from interviews with 15 hourly-paid and 32 self-employed hairstylists and a self-administered survey. Relations of employment are found to be central to the deployment of emotional labour. Self-employed owner-operators are highly dependent on clients, rely on deep-acting, enact favours, and are prone to emotional breaking points when they fail to realise their 'congealed service'. In contrast, hourly-paid stylists perform surface acting, resist unpaid favours and experience fewer breaking points. Methodologically this article demonstrates the importance of comparative employment relations analysis (CERA) for exposing the relationship between employment structures and labour process experiences.
When it Pays to be Friendly: Employment Relations and Worker-Client Interactions in Hairdressing
2004
Sociology Department. UCLA This paper investigates the effects of employment relations on hairstylists' social interactions with clients. The rise of the service sector, and of personal services in particular, has focused attention on worker-client interactions, much of it employing Hochschild's (1984) conceptualization of "Emotional Labor." Meanwhile economic sociology has become increasingly aware of the presence, and even increase, of non-standard employment relations. However to date little attention has been paid to the impact of different employment relationsself-employment, subcontracting , homework, on-commission-work, corporate employment, small firm employment-on the form taken by worker-client interactions and the emotional labor required to produce these. Because hairstylists are employed in a multiplicity of employment relations while still essentially "doing the same work" they are an ideal subject for investigation of this topic. Research based on both a mailed survey and interviews with a representative sample of salons and barbershops in a northern British city shows that there is variation in both the content of interactions and in the methods of "deep acting" employed by stylists working within different employment relations. This research can enrich our understanding of emotional labor and its development and can serve to augment discussion (and critiques) of historic changes in patterns of employment relationships. EARLY DRAFT: Comments are welcome. But please don't cite! contradictory and less than successful outcomes (Gimlin 1996; Sharma and Black 2001). 4 Authors who have focused on the issue of a 'following' have generally argued that the possession of a following is critical because it stabilizes stylists' current income (by guaranteeing a steady stream of clients), gives stylists leverage vis-à-vis salon owners, and makes future mobility possible without a drop in income (Eayrs 1993; Schroder 1978; Willet 2000). Accounts that emphasize the centrality of establishing a 'following' touch on an issue that is critical. But only for some stylists. The majority of academic research on hairstyling as a form of work has been conducted in a single salon (Eayrs 1993; Furman 1997; Gimlin 1996; Soulliere 1997; Williams 1993), in a very few salons (Van Leuven 2002), or has focused on a single 'type' of hairstylist (salon owners (Sharma and Black 2001); trainees (Parkinson 1991)). 5 Given that, in practice, hair salons and barbershops and the employment relationships that exist within them vary greatly, research that relies on a single salon or on stylists who are all in the same employment relationship, runs the risk of conflating social relations that are the outcome of distinct relations of employment with an essential set of characteristics of the work. In contrast my research starts from the assumption that it may make a difference to the labor process-to workers' relations with other workers; to their hours of work; to their control over their own work; and (the focus of this paper) to their interactions with clients-whether hairstylists are self-employed, employees, or subcontractors; whether they work for an on-site boss or a corporation; whether they work from home or in a dedicated salon/barbershop. Indeed, 4 In particular it has been argued that this has produced contradictory stresses-on the one hand, on a 'professionalism' that is based on, and claimed for, the accumulation of job-specific skills and expertise (cutting, dying… etc.), and on the other, on a 'professionalism' that is rooted in the deployment of appropriate emotional labor, or dealing 'professionally' with clients. In acquiescing to client's needs and desires hairdressers undercut their own claims to 'know better'(Gimlin 1996 516-518; Sharma and Black 2001: 923,928). 5 Three notable exceptions have been Willet's (2000) fascinating historical account of the American beauty shop, Lawson's (1999) class and gender analysis of different types of salon/barbershop and their clientele, and Schroder's (1978) exhaustive early study. Gutek, Cherry et al.'s (2000) although examining the industry from the perspective of the client, also provides an interesting comparative framework.
The Emotional Consequences of Service Work: An Ethnographic Examination of Hair Salon Workers
This article explores the connections between service work and the everyday lived emotional experiences of hair salon workers. Over the past few years, numerous studies have linked service work with various social psychological outcomes, including well-being, job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, depression, and stress. In an effort to explore the connections between service work and the everyday lived emotional experiences of service workers, original data in the form of nonparticipant field observations and in-depth interviews of 25 hair salon workers were collected in a moderate-sized Midwestern college town. Our findings are generally consistent with the power and status theories of emotion described by Theodore . Customer service interactions are conducive to both positive and negative emotional outcomes. Specifically, complimentary evaluations and the conferral of intimacy favor feelings of pride and happiness, whereas unsatisfactory evaluations and the denial of intimacy contribute to feelings of anger and sadness.
Emotional labour in action: Navigating multiple involvements in the beauty salon
Sociology, 2007
Building on Hochschild's path-breaking analysis of service providers'emotional labour', this article demonstrates some of the interactional skills required for emotional labour to be performed. Using conversation analysis (CA), we examine a single case from a database of recorded beauty salon interactions. The episode was chosen because it makes visible the mechanics of how a beauty therapist manages conflict between hermultiple involvements' in the salon: between her simultaneous engagement in topic talk and hair ...
Meanings of work for manicurists and hairdressers: employees and pejotizados
Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, 2021
The research aimed to identify the differentiation of meanings of work among beauty salon workers, considering the work contracts and the functions performed (hairdressers and manicurists), in a context of pejotização and functions’ internal hierarchy. We applied questionnaires to 171 manicurists and hairdressers with the following types of links: employee, informal, MEI pejotizado and MEI não pejotizado. The results indicated that employees perceive with greater intensity the work as a responsibility and as a way of being socially included, and more proportionality in social and financial retribution. They also indicated that manicurists experience with more intensity the characteristics of brutalization, discrimination and demand.
This article broadens the landscape of sensual ways of knowing and understanding and takes account of what we hear at work. In particular, I examine what role sounds play in the everyday lives of employees and why sounds are notable in organisational research. Central to this exploration are data gathered from a study of hairdressers working in hair salons. The findings presented here demonstrate that employees use sounds to sensually and creatively 'tune out' the emotional labour encountered as part of their work. It is argued that these auditory routines are used as a way of escaping work that is different to other strategies of escape; it is less about resistance or dis-identification, and more about respite and ways of relocating the 'self' elsewhere.
International Journal …, 2011
This paper explores the work of UK hair stylists in 'up-market' hairdressing salons and examines the connection between the organisation of work and customer service narratives within these salon environments. Drawing on qualitative empirical research, the paper discusses how tensions, generated through managerial regulation and the concomitant requirement for stylists to exercise task discretion, are ultimately reconciled through customer service narratives. The paper argues that while the narratives achieve this by operating as a form of normative regulation in the salons, whereby the work practices of stylists are shaped in line with organisational goals and objectives, they also function as resources for stylists through which they can further their economic and occupational selfinterests.