The Emotional Proletariat in Public Service

• Author: Mary E. Guy,Sung Wook Choi
• Date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026020921421
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026020921421

Public Personnel Management

2021, Vol. 50(2) 183 –204

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0091026020921421

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Article

The Emotional Proletariat

in Public Service

Sung Wook Choi1

and Mary E. Guy2

Abstract

There is an emotional proletariat in public service. This class of worker is employed

in lower ranking, lower paid jobs that are disproportionately performed by women.

While this study focuses on the Korean context, findings also raise awareness to

the U.S. context. An investigation of two distinctly different missions—national tax

officials and police officers—reveals how the combination of gender and rank produces

differential outcomes in regard to emotive demands. Women in lower grades suffer

more emotional exhaustion and feel less pride in their jobs than women and men in

higher ranks. The pattern provides evidence that emotional exhaustion is less about

individual failure and more about predictable job characteristics. After describing

findings, the conclusion speculates about generalizing to the American context.

Keywords

emotional labor, employment equity, gender studies, organizational behavior,

productivity

Public service work, by definition, involves service to others, and if there is one gen-

eralization that is tried and true, it is that engaging with others requires emotional

labor. Even though it is an essential part of the job, it is invisible, being neither speci-

fied in job descriptions nor rewarded by compensation. And, as if in superposition, it

is treated as if it does not exist at the same time that everyone in the office knows who

is good at performing it and who is not. From the perspective of workers, the emotive

component of the job produces positive feelings of meaningfulness and pride in their

1Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Republic of Korea

2University of Colorado Denver, CO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Mary E. Guy, School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver, Campus Box 142, 1380 Lawrence

St., Ste 525, Denver, CO 80217-3364, USA.

Email: mary.guy@ucdenver.edu

921421PPMXXX10.1177/0091026020921421Public Personnel ManagementChoi and Guy

research-article2020

184 Public Personnel Management 50(2)

work, and it can also be exhausting. This research examines how gender and occupa-

tional rank factor into emotional labor outcomes for Korean civil servants. The results

then provide a stage for recognizing analogous dynamics in the United States

Discussion proceeds as follows. First, emotional labor is described in terms of the

role it plays in providing the human touch in the citizen-state encounter. Then, frontline

workers are described in terms of their role as the face of government, delivering ser-

vices directly to citizens and, in the process, engaging in emotional labor to do their jobs.

Because those who work on the frontlines occupy lower rungs in agency hierarchies, and

because they are the “human touch” of public service, it is as if they are emotional pro-

letarians. Hypotheses regarding their work are explained and the study is described.

Findings are used as a springboard for consideration of the American public service

environment and whether similar dynamics are present. The paper closes by reviewing

implications for human resource management in terms of both theory and practice.

Emotional Labor

Emotional labor is the management of emotion on the job; it is required in order to

fulfill work responsibilities. The term was coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild after

she had observed customer service expectations for airline attendants (Hochschild,

1983). Extrapolating to the public service environment where it is not sales commis-

sions at stake, but rather health, safety, compliance, citizen engagement, and mission

fulfillment at stake, there is a significant amount of emotion management that occurs

in the citizen-state encounter. It requires the ability to express job-appropriate emo-

tions regardless of whether they are congruent with how the public service profes-

sional actually feels. Either by pretending or by authentically reflecting their true

feelings, those who are skilled at it complete their jobs in such a way that the citizen—

state encounter is accomplished with competence and compassion. Connecting emo-

tively is the human touch that cannot be delivered via forms and regulations.

The early development of emotional labor as a concept was in retail sales and per-

forming it was conceptualized as acting (Grandey, 2003; Hochschild, 1983), for there

was no expectation of anything other than a one-off transactional sales relationship.

No deeper meaning was assumed or expected. Thus, a binary dramaturgical terminol-

ogy was developed, assuming that employees were expressing emotion either superfi-

cially (surface acting) or conjuring the feeling so that, like an actor on stage, the

performance would seem authentic. In commercial activities that begin and end with a

sales transaction or a passenger flight, this construction is apt. However, many citi-

zen—state encounters are more meaningful than a simple transaction. Taking their cue

from the descriptions that public service professionals used to explain their experience

of emotional labor on the job, Guy et al. (2008) concluded that a more accurate way of

describing emotional labor in public service is in term of authentic displays of emotion

or as pretending because these are the terms their interviewees used to explain their

emotive displays. Similar characterizations are now also reported by Zimmermann

(2011); Rayner and Lawton (2018), among others, while the terms “deep acting” and

“surface acting” continue to be used in more theoretical contexts.