Abstract:
There is currently little research focusing specifically on the emotional labour and regulation of academic staff in higher education institutions. This study provides insight into the emotional labour regulation strategies that academic staff use within the higher education context.
This research both explores and describes the emotional regulatory strategies that lecturers (including senior lecturers, associate professors and professors) use in a research-intensive academic institution in the South African context. Although previous research has shown that emotional labour is relevant in the higher education context for academic staff, little research has been conducted to uncover which regulation strategies academic staff use and why these strategies are employed.
This study was conducted using a qualitative method, in which a combination of snowball, convenience and purposive sampling strategies was used to gain access to the intended sample of fifteen participants. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were the source of data collection and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data collected.
Emotional labour has been shown to affect the well-being of professionals in their workplace. Therefore, monitoring and controlling emotional labour is of paramount importance for a healthy workforce. In a higher education environment, the well-being of students is directly influenced by the well-being of the staff and the overall effectiveness of service delivery by the organisation (in terms of research outputs as well as teaching and learning). Evidently, the emotional labour and regulation thereof of the individual academic staff member may have far-reaching effects.
This study confirmed that emotional labour is experienced by academic staff within the university context. Moreover, the academic work context of academic staff involves a high degree of interaction with people that includes a range of diverse job tasks. The perceived display rules of the university were defined and described in this study. The emotional labour regulation strategies that academic lecturing staff utilise are those of deep, genuine and surface acting. However, the use of these strategies is not straightforward, as academic lecturing staff apply a range of these regulation strategies based on several reasons or rationales. These rationales further determine when an individual will select one or a combination of regulation strategies.
