Are business academics in Australia experiencing emotional labour? A call for empirical research

The concept of ‘emotional labour’ is concerned with occasions when feelings are managed to create publically observable emotions in organizational settings in ways that involve them being ‘sold for a wage’ and therefore taking on an ‘exchange value’ (Hochschild (1983: 7). Drawing on an in-depth literature review, this paper explore grounds for arguing that business academics in Australia are experiencing emotional labor. The authors consider the application of findings concerned with emotional labor in a variety of occupations in relation to the context of university business schools. More specifically, they discuss how two decades of increasing marketisation, commercialisation and service orientated university practices may have contributed to emotional labor in Australian university business schools. The paper draws two conclusions. Firstly, educational managers need to be better informed about the positive and negative implications of emotional labor so that they can develop appropriate strategies, guidelines and workplace environments at the organizational level. Secondly, that a review of the literature suggests that empirical research is warranted in order to address the question posed in the title of the paper.