NAME: Dachiraju Chandana Varma

141356

Roll No.:

TITLE: Emotional dissonance in call centre work

AUTHOR: Wegge, Jrgen; Rolf Van Dick; Christiane von
Bernstorf
PUBLICATIONS: Search.proquest.com

OBJECTIVES

To gather information about the emotional dissonance at work.

To shed light on the emotional underpinnings of emotional dissonance.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A field study with 161 call centre agents was conducted. Positive afectivity
(PA), negative afectivity (NA) of agents and customer verbal aggression
were conceptualized as correlates of emotional dissonance, whereas job
satisfaction, health disorders and burnout were assessed as indicators of
agents' work motivation and well- being.
Call centre agents were informed about the option to participate in thE study
by written advertisements in the entrance area of their call centre. Agents
filled out the questionnaires during leisure time. Participation was
confidential and voluntary. A total of 161 usable questionnaires were
returned within two weeks after the distribution in boxes that were
positioned in the entrance area of call centres (response rate 53 percent). Of
the respondents, 62 percent were female, average age was 32.6 years, and
mean professional experience was 2.3 years. A total of 69 percent of agents
had a permanent contract, 31 percent a short term contract.

Participants were asked to rate how intensively they experience these moods
in general using scales from 1= "not present" to 5= "very strong" with a
validated German version of this instrument. Verbal customer aggression
was assessed as a further potential antecedent of emotional dissonance. For
this purpose, a corresponding sub-scale of a broader instrument measuring
customer-related social stressors presented by Dormann and Zapf (2004)
was utilized. This scale comprises five items. They used the FEWS, Version
4.0 to measure emotional dissonance. The corresponding scale consists of
five items referring to the suppression of felt emotions as well as to the
display of emotions not actually felt.
To measure employees' well-being two instruments were used. The Maslach
Burnout Inventory in the German translation (MBI-D) from Bssing and Perrar
(1992) assesses the three components of burnout: Emotional exhaustion
(eight items) and Depersonalization (five items). It comprises a list of 16
specific emotions which can be clearly distinguished on the basis of several
emotion theories. After dropping "sexual arousal" the remaining list of 15
emotions - dislike, anger, envy, boredom, anxiety, unrest, sadness, longing,
shame, guilt, happiness, pride, sympathy, afection, surprise - was presented
three times in diferent parts of the questionnaire.
The first time agents rated each emotion and were instructed to report "how
intensive" they experience these emotions in their work (from 1="not
present" to 6="very strong"). The second time the same list was presented
with the instruction to report "how often" these emotions are experienced at
work. Finally, the third time the list was presented with an instruction to
assess emotional dissonance linked to each emotion.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Emotion work is a rather broad construct that typically includes the
experience of emotional dissonance as one sub-facet. Several approaches
have been developed to describe the various elements that are involved in
emotion work. Even though there is no complete agreement on how to define
emotion work in general, most researchers describe it as a multidimensional
construct that comprises several facets such as attentiveness to emotional
display rules and emotions of other people, the more or less frequent
volitional display of emotions, or cognitive processes that are involved in
producing or not showing specific emotions.

Based on the work of Hochschild (1983), these processes are usually

described as surface acting (e.g. managing only the visible aspects of
emotions by faking or suppressing feelings) or as deep acting (e.g. when
people try to influence what they really feel by reframing the situation or by
taking the perspective of a client in order to fulfil their prescribed work role).
In line with this diferentiation, emotional dissonance experiences are
sometimes also referred to as "surface acting" because successful deep
acting might lead to the resolution of a dissonance experience.
Emotional labour is defined as the "efort, planning and control needed to
express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions".
In this definition, the observable behaviour of the service provider (e.g.
nurse, clerk) is emphasized. Other definitions focus more on the presence of
emotional display rules at work and / or the various cognitive processes (e.g.
goal setting, planning, monitoring) that regulate the presentation of
emotions.
Potential benefits of emotion work such as increased service quality for
customers or higher income for service providers (e.g. waiters) and potential
problems such as emotional exhaustion due to emotion work in general or
emotional dissonances in particular are discussed for some time. The FEWS
(Frankfurt Emotion Work Scales) comprise several scales that measure,
among other things, the requirement to display positive emotions during
work, the necessity of displaying unpleasant emotions towards customers,
sensitivity requirements (e.g. whether empathy or knowledge about clients'
current feelings are needed in the job), requirements to show sympathy to
the sorrows and problems of the client, emotion work control (control with
regard to the display of emotions), interaction control (e.g. control regarding
available time and completion of an interaction) and emotional dissonance,
the mismatch between felt emotions and organizationally desired
expressions of emotions.

FINDINGS
The results show that emotional dissonance was associated with lower work
motivation and well-being. Moreover, NA and customer aggression correlated
positively whereas PA correlated negatively with emotional dissonance.
Emotional dissonance measured with the FEWS was significantly related to
the frequency of longing, the intensity of anger and the not showing of
boredom, afection and anger.

SUMMARY
This article talks about the emotional dissonance experienced by employees
working in a call centre. Emotions are intense feelings directed on someone
or something. Emotions include anger, fear, frustration, disappointment, joy,
love, hope, jealousy and many other. Emotional dissonance is the art of
maintaining the same emotion even though we are not in a position to
express it.
In this research article, the author tells about the experience of the
employees in call centre, who have to work in any condition irrespective of
their mood. Though the call centre does not have any face to face contact,
but still the tone of the employee changes according to the mood of that
individual. Even the mood of the employee changes due to the customers
response, i.e. if the person talks very rudely or continuously throws questions
on the employee, they get frustrated and irritated.
They experimented on a group of people working in a call centre. They
adopted a new way of survey by asking them to fill the questionnaire during
their leisure time and they had diferent methods to evaluate the emotions
that the employee had undergone during their work which had diferent
scales for the participants so that they can rate their emotions in diferent
situations.
There are two afects in this emotions, i.e. positive afect (PA) a negative
afect (NA). High NA individuals have probably more negative emotions to
suppress than low NA individuals. Moreover, high PA individuals are often in a
good mood and, as a consequence, they probably have to suppress less
negative emotions than low PA individuals.
From the survey conducted, we can conclude that emotional dissonance is a
result of lower motive and well-being at the workplace. It is also said that
Negative Afect is correlated positively with customer aggression and Positive
Afect is correlated negatively with emotional dissonance.