A Balancing Act: Emotional Challenges in the HR Role

INTRODUCTION

The role that human resource (HR) professionals should and do play in the effective management of the employment relationship remains controversial territory. This is despite much scholarly work, and the development of multiple HR models and typolo- gies (e.g., Legge, 1978; Storey, 1992; Tyson and Fell, 1986; Ulrich, 1997; Ulrich and Brockbank, 2005; Watson, 1977). Contemporary models propose that the profession occupies a strategic business partner role, but a closer reading of the critical HR management (HRM) literature demonstrates that debate regarding the empirical validity and usefulness of such models continues (Caldwell, 2003; Caldwell and Storey, 2007; Sisson and Storey, 2000). Criticism centres on a lack of acknowledgment of the inherent duality in HR work arising from competing role demands and trade-offs between employee needs and organizational objectives. In turn, it is argued that the paradoxes facing the HR practitioner in their everyday work are downplayed (e.g., Caldwell, 2003;

Address for reprints: Elaine O’Brien, School of Management & Marketing, College of Business & Law, University College Cork, College Road, Cork, Ireland (elaine.obrien@ucc.ie).

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E. O’Brien and C. Linehan

Francis and Keegan, 2006; Hope-Hailey et al., 2005; Legge, 2005; Truss et al., 2002) and the emotional challenges these create ignored (Hiillos, 2004; Rynes, 2004). Further- more, our understanding of how the HR role is actually played by practitioners is limited (Truss et al., 2002), due to the fact that there are few detailed empirical studies that focus on how HR professionals do their jobs (Farndale and Brewster, 2005; Pritchard, 2010; Watson, 2004).

We argue that focusing on the emotional challenges involved in HR work is a useful way to deepen our understanding of the role, and to move beyond prescriptive accounts. Studies of emotion have an increasing profile in organizational research (e.g., Ashkanasy, 2002; Barsade et al., 2003; Bolton, 2000). Much of this renewed interest stems from Arlie Hochschild’s (1983) seminal book The Managed Heart in which she proposed the notion of ‘emotional labour’. Hochschild used this term to describe how employees manage feelings and emotional expression at work to display organizationally desired emotions, which are encapsulated in ‘display rules’ (Ekman, 1972). Her empirical work highlighted how emotion management at work can make a vital contribution to an organization’s success. In turn, the idea that emotion can be key to achieving a competitive advantage captivated many organizations, and changes in the types of emotion management performances demanded of employees is well documented (e.g., Ashkanasy and Daus, 2002; Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Van Maanen and Kunda, 1989).

Emotion has however, with a few exceptions (see Hiillos, 2004; Rynes, 2004), yet to be explored in relation to the work of HR professionals. This is despite the emotionally challenging situations that inevitably arise out of, for example, performance manage- ment or restructuring and redundancy programmes and from the everyday challenges of dealing with the (often competing) needs of organizational stakeholders. The current paper explores this lacuna in our understanding of the HR role. It draws on the findings of a broader empirical study which investigated emotional labour (EL) in the HR context and provides an insight into HR professionals’ EL, illuminating participants’ understand- ing of their role and of the organizational and occupational expectations placed upon them by various stakeholders.

Using the lens of EL has the potential to make unique contributions to debate about the HR role. First, it could be argued that by investigating the EL of HR professionals we tap into the critical events and experiences (both positive and negative) beyond the prescriptive rhetoric about what HR ‘ought’ to be about. By asking participants to recount events requiring EL, our approach sheds light on their triumphs, challenges, and conflicts. Second, the blending of ‘emotion’ and ‘role’ in our investigation seems par- ticularly congruent as we draw on a conception of ‘role’ that assumes it is fluid, enacted, and constructed from interactions with stakeholders who may accept/reject/resist par- ticular positionings (Davies and Harre, 1999; Harre and van Langenhove, 1999; Truss et al., 2002). We uncover contested and emotive elements of HR work and thus a more analytic account of the role is offered than extant conceptions.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: after a discussion of ambiguity in the HR role, a brief overview of EL and how the concept applies to HR work is given.

A description of research methods employed is followed by the presentation of findings as they relate to participants’ understanding of their role. The paper culminates in a

1259 discussion of how the insights provided here contribute to our understanding of the HR

Emotional Challenges in the HR Role

role and of EL in backstage roles.

Duality and Paradox in the HR Role

The HR role is complex and paradoxical in nature. HR practitioners face divergent expectations and must negotiate the needs and values of multiple stakeholders. From an organizational point of view, the primary role of an HR professional is to contribute to strategic business objectives by ensuring that adequate numbers of employees exist, with the right skills, in the right positions, to achieve business goals (e.g., profitability, expan- sion into new markets). As a business partner and service provider, the HR role holder must provide managers with information about people-related issues, ensure employee compliance with company policy, provide employees with timely pay and benefit infor- mation, provide training, and undertake many other tasks associated with achieving bottom-line results (Becker and Huselid, 1998). For employees however, traditional conceptions of HR as primarily a ‘welfare’ role tend to persist and drive expectations of role behaviour (Bolton and Houlihan, 2007; Sisson and Storey, 2000). Employees tend to see the HR professional as someone who will care for their needs and champion their cause.

The HR role is also framed by the broader academic and occupational context. The rise of HRM and the changing nature of HR work have exposed practitioners to new demands and professional challenges, and many different typologies have been offered to capture such changes. Most contemporary HR models incorporate both people and process aspects of the role as well as operational and strategic activities. For instance, according to Ulrich and Brockbank, the HR professional must be an ‘administrative expert’ with an operational focus on improving organizational efficiency but they must also be a ‘strategic partner’ and have a future focus of aligning people management with business strategies. Additionally, they must be an ‘employee advocate’ and ‘human resource developer’ responsible for listening to and responding to employees but also ensuring that the employer–employee relationship is one of reciprocal value (Ulrich and Brockbank, 2005). This ‘business partner’ framework has been trumpeted as the aspirational ideal for the HR profession (Caldwell, 2003).

HR professionals, it seems, are expected to simultaneously deliver on both social and economic criteria (Bolton and Houlihan, 2007). They face the paradox of trying to meet the dual goals of protecting employee interests while becoming a business partner; trying to negotiate the ‘caring’ and ‘control’ aspects of the job while keeping all parties ‘on-side’; and trying to maintain an image of competence and credibility in the eyes of manage- ment by implementing strategies and practices that respond to economic circumstances whilst maintaining the trust of the workforce.

So where does this leave the HR practitioner who must attempt to understand and enact the various organizational and occupational expectations placed upon them? Unfortunately, because of the relative lack of empirical investigations into HR work, little is known about how HR professionals make sense of, and try to deliver on, multiple and diverse role expectations. We can perhaps make inferences from studies of other occu- pational groups’ challenges in dealing with competing role demands. While there are

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different conceptualizations of professionalism (see Muzio et al., 2013 for an overview), there is a literature that examines how professionals attempt to construct coherent professional identities (e.g., Dirsmith et al., 1997; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003). These however do not tend to focus on emotional demands. There are a few exceptions (e.g., Cascon-Pereira and Hallier, 2012; Harris, 2002; Kosmala and Herrbach, 2006). Kosmala and Herrbach (2006), for instance, explored how varying aspects of profession- alism can engender conflicting emotions for auditors. In brief, they argue that the clash of values of professionalism (built on knowledge base and expertise and involving an ethical dimension to auditing) and commercialism (based on being business orientated to maximize revenue) are irreconcilable. This creates stress and results in auditors adopting

a distancing attitude at work. In common with these professionals, HR practitioners must learn how to inhabit and enact their role and adhere to their own and other stakeholders’ expectations. The complexities and emotional challenges involved in this role enactment are not adequately reflected in contemporary HR models such as those proposed by Ulrich and colleagues. The dual goals of protecting employee interests while increasing efficiency are acknowledged but unitarist assumptions of a happy coincidence between employer and employee needs and interests are taken for granted and the conflicts that face the HR practitioner are downplayed (Caldwell, 2003; Francis and Keegan, 2006; Hope-Hailey et al., 2005; Legge, 2005; Truss et al., 2002). In turn the ambiguity in HR work (origi- nally highlighted in the writings of Legge, 1978 and Watson, 1977, 1986) has been neglected (e.g., Francis and Keegan, 2006; Keenoy, 1997, 1999) and the challenges facing practitioners in trying to achieve a balance between stakeholders’ interests has not been given due consideration. As a consequence little is known about the internal role conflicts and professional and emotional challenges that arise when competing needs collide (Hiillos, 2004; Rynes, 2004).

Emotional Labour

Since Hochschild originally conceived the concept, EL has become a central issue in contemporary research into emotion in organizations (e.g., Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Zapf, 2002). According to Hochschild (1983), EL is the purposeful effort workers engage in to conform to organizational norms or display rules which dictate the kinds of emotions employees should and should not express in the performance of their work. Hochschild acknowledged that individuals engage in emotion management in all spheres of life and across the multiple roles they hold at home and work, but she draws a distinction between emotion work and emotional labour. People, she argues, engage in emotion work in their everyday interactions to ‘create a publicly observable facial and bodily display’ (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7). Emotional labour describes when emotion management is done within the organizational context in exchange for a wage and occurs when rules defining the appropriate display of feelings dictate an outward response that conflicts with the emotion felt inside or when ‘the ought of the feeling struggles with the is’ (Hochschild, 1983, p. 61). Hochschild argued that in this context emotion management takes a different form because the worker is placed in a position of deference to the customer and feeling rules or scripts are management imposed (Payne, 2006). In

1261 response, the employee regulates their emotion and emotional expression to meet the

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requirements of their job and achieve organizational goals.

Emotional labour is different to considering emotion as a reaction to work because it refers to intentional efforts to convince others that one feels a particular emotion so as to influence how they perceive and react to a situation. It can also be distinguished from emotional intelligence (EI), described as ‘the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action’ (Salovey and Mayer, 1990, p. 189). As Fabian (1999) suggests, EI is having the ability and EL is acting on that ability. EL also recognizes that emotional functioning is situation dependent and influenced by display rules and norms.

Numerous job roles have been shown to require EL, including service personnel such as waiters/waitresses, call centre agents, and other customer service representatives (e.g., Grandey et al., 2005; Korczynski, 2003; Shani et al., 2014; Van Maanen, 1991); healthcare workers (e.g., nurses; Smith, 1992); and police officers (e.g., Rafaeli and Sutton, 1991). The effective management of emotional expression has been linked to improvements in sales, quality of team decisions and negotiations (e.g., Grandey and Brauburger, 2002; Pugh, 2001) and is increasingly seen as essential in achieving bottom line results for the organization. Despite the burgeoning studies and advances in conceptualization (e.g., Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Grandey, 2000; Morris and Feldman, 1996; Zapf, 2002) our understanding of the EL phenomenon is largely derived from a ‘front of house’ customer-facing service context. This is because EL has primarily been conceptualized as the duty of service personnel interacting with customers or the general public and research has been biased towards this domain (e.g., Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Ashkanasy and Daus, 2002; Hochschild, 1983; Morris and Feldman, 1996). It is only relatively recently that researchers have gone beyond the traditional focus to explore EL in ‘backstage’ settings (see Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Ogbonna and Harris, 2004; Roach Anleu and Mack, 2005). Indications are that EL is an important issue in communications between colleagues and with supervisors (Kramer and Hess, 2002; Tschan et al., 2005), amongst leaders (Humphrey et al., 2008), and for professional level employees including barristers (Harris, 2002), magistrates (Roach Anleu and Mack, 2005), and lecturers (Ogbonna and Harris, 2004), and is in fact critical to effective job performance. It has also been suggested that the requirement to control emotional display on the job will intensify for most job roles (Zapf, 2002) and that to arrive at a more complete understanding of this increasingly important organizational issue, the research focus needs to shift from frontline service contexts. As such there have been multiple calls for the study of EL in more diverse contexts and in particular in professional level job roles (e.g., Harris, 2002; Humphrey et al., 2008; Tschan et al., 2005).

Emotional Labour and the HR Role

Given the nature of their work and the emotion engendering situations they face it would appear reasonable to assume that the appropriate management of emotion and emo- tional expression is a crucial aspect of HR work. Hochschild (1993) did in fact indicate that personnel managers engage in EL, stating that:

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As part of the personnel manager’s emotional labour he has to learn the company’s ‘emotional map’. . . . He has to know where, along an accelerating array of insults, it becomes OK to take offence without too much counter-offence. He has to under- stand what various expressions ‘mean’ for a worker with a given biography, dispo- sition, reputation and status within the company. On an overlay map so to speak,

he learns to trace patterns of emotional attribution (for example the secretaries may say their boss is mad today while his own boss doesn’t think so at all). (Hochschild, 1993, p. xi)

Empirical investigations of the emotional labour of HR practitioners though have not been forthcoming. This neglect could perhaps be due to the fact that while HR often involves a customer service orientation, it is a different kind of service role to that commonly discussed in the EL literature in that HR professionals generally do not deal with the public (with the exception of recruitment) and their ‘customers’ tend to be colleagues and other internal organizational constituents. Furthermore, unlike front-line service personnel whose work is generally scripted and monitored closely by supervisors to ensure compliance with organizational rules, HR practitioners have a large degree of autonomy in performing their role (Watson, 1977, 1986). In fact, given that EL is primarily conceptualized as the management of emotional expression in response to an organizationally mandated display (Hochschild, 1983), one could contend that it does not apply to HR professionals.

It has been argued however that EL is also performed in response to implicit norms and expectations of role holder behaviour (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1995), and in this regard it could be considered an aspect of HR work. HR is a functional role whose organizational power and influence is restricted and whose members are subject to multiple expectations, which inevitably influence and constrain practitioner behaviour (Truss et al., 2002). As Caldwell (2003) argues, the roles of HR professionals are ‘mirror images of shifting managerial perceptions, judgements and actions, over which personnel practitioners may have only limited influence’ (p. 1003).

HR practitioners’ working lives, and their behaviour including their emotional behav- iour, are very much constrained by contextual pressures. While research such as that conducted by Hiillos (2004) highlights that dealing with emotion is a central responsibil- ity of the HR practitioner, it does not explore the expectations for emotional expression associated with various HR roles. Nor does it explore how HR practitioners manage and control their own emotions to fulfil job requirements.

In summary, little attention has been given to the emotional challenges inherent in HR work and, as with most backstage professional roles, the EL of HR professionals has been previously un-researched. The research reported here is part of a broader study to address these extant gaps by investigating the emotional challenges HR professionals face when enacting their role. The wider research was guided by the following questions: Do HR professionals engage in emotional labour? Why and how do they do so? What do they perceive to be the rules for emotional expression (which emotion displays are allowed, which are not) governing their job role? What are the consequences for indi- viduals of performing such activities? From these findings we present here how HR professionals perceive and talk about their role and the corresponding behavioural and In summary, little attention has been given to the emotional challenges inherent in HR work and, as with most backstage professional roles, the EL of HR professionals has been previously un-researched. The research reported here is part of a broader study to address these extant gaps by investigating the emotional challenges HR professionals face when enacting their role. The wider research was guided by the following questions: Do HR professionals engage in emotional labour? Why and how do they do so? What do they perceive to be the rules for emotional expression (which emotion displays are allowed, which are not) governing their job role? What are the consequences for indi- viduals of performing such activities? From these findings we present here how HR professionals perceive and talk about their role and the corresponding behavioural and

METHOD

This study is guided by the interpretivist view that reality is relative and multiple and that it is important to understand motives, meanings, reasons, and other subjective experi- ences which are time and context bound (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). The goal is to connect the reader to the world of participants in order to facilitate an understanding of their subjective experience and illuminate the structures and processes that shape indi- viduals’ lives and their relations with others. The researcher is also historically and locally situated in the process being studied and thus knowledge is not value free (Denzin, 2001). Therefore any representational form should have enough ‘interpretative sufficiency’ (Christians et al., 1993, p. 120) – that is, possess depth, detail, nuance, and coherence to assist the reader in forming critical consciousness (Denzin, 2001). Here this means to give an interpretative portrayal of the emotional labour of HR professionals as perceived and experienced by role holders themselves and as told to and interpreted by researchers with experience in the HR field.

Through attending to the detail of participants’ language and accounts we hope to generate insights into their emotions and experiences and offer a counterpoint to many prescriptive accounts of the HR role which tend not to be grounded in role holders’ day to day experiences. By remaining analytically sensitive to how each individual’s account sheds light on their emotional response and the social context within which it emerges and is constructed, we provide theoretical insights about not only emotion and the HR role but also the dynamics of EL in backstage roles, an area not currently well understood.

Methods Employed

The research design employed falls within the grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Given the wealth of research conducted on EL in the service context and more recent research (although limited) on backstage roles, it could be argued that we are not dealing with a theoretically green-field site and thus an inductive grounded theory approach is not warranted. Our knowledge of backstage EL is however in its infancy and there have been suggestions that models of EL developed in the service context may not be directly transferable to the backstage context (see Harris, 2002; Ogbonna and Harris, 2004). There has also been little empirical work done on the enactment of the HR role. However, while ‘pure’ grounded theory requires the inductive generation of theory without preconceived concepts, the approach adopted here follows that of Strauss and Corbin (1990) in that existing theories and studies served as a solid foundation from which to explore EL in the HR role. Also, based on Turner’s (1983) pragmatic approach, central concepts such as ‘emotional labour’ and ‘emotional display’ were broadly defined before data collection. Strauss and Corbin see the litera- ture as an important initial source of knowledge that begins the building of theory. The aim was to begin the study from this vantage point but to remain open so as not to ‘force’

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the data. A similar approach was taken by Harris (2002) in his study of the EL of barristers and was designed to provide insights into a framework of EL that is grounded in data but also informed by existing research. Our analysis and the concepts we derive from the analysis are influenced by extant theories both in the EL and HR role domains, however by attending to the detail of participants’ accounts and the language used we sought to ‘make the familiar strange’ (Spindler and Spindler, 1982 in Suddaby, 2006, p. 635).

Participants. Given the exploratory nature of the study and the need to understand the context of the research, non-probability sampling (also known as judgement or purposive sampling) was deemed appropriate for the current research (see Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Pratt, 2009). As Gummeson (1991) argues, unlike quantitative sampling, which is driven by the imperative of representativeness, qualitative sampling is concerned with the depth and richness of data. A key issue within non-probability sampling is gaining access to ‘key’ informants whose knowledge and insights are crucial to understanding the phenomenon being researched (see Crimp and Wright, 1995). In the current case, and following the grounded theory approach, this meant that participants were gradually selected according to the expected level of new insights they could provide, the need to confirm/disconfirm propositions that had begun to emerge from initial interviews, and to ensure that interesting issues were further explored.

The first interview was conducted with a senior HR professional. This participant was asked to provide a list of other HR professionals of varying characteristics who may be interested and willing to take part in the study. In a snowballing effect each additional recruit was asked to generate a similar list of contacts. At the early stages of sampling the choice of participants was based on a need to get the perspectives of role holders with different characteristics (e.g., varying years of experience, from different organizational levels, across the main HR areas, male and female). As the study progressed, sampling was driven by the emerging propositions. For example, where a proposition arose that the negative consequences of EL may be offset by having other HR team members to confide in, an effort was made to recruit a participant who worked in a ‘lone’ HR role to see if they found engaging in EL more difficult and to uncover alternative coping strategies they may use.

Fifteen participants (six male; nine female) took part in the study; their HR experience ranged from 2 years to more than 15 years. They came from across the organizational levels (HR Vice-President – HR Specialist/Officer) and HR areas (Reward & Remu- neration; Training & Organization Development; Recruitment), and from a range of industry sectors, including Manufacturing, Pharmaceutical, IT, Leisure/Tourism, Food & Drinks, Public Sector, and Retail. While this choice of sample does not allow for an in-depth analysis of one particular HR specialism, it does give a flavour across the many levels and diverse aspects of the role.

Data collection methods. Two methods of data collection were employed: (i) in-depth inter- views to generate deep and rich data; and (ii) a diary measure (referred to as ‘Interaction Records’) to try and reduce the retrospective element of accounts and get ‘live’ examples of workplace interactions.

1265 In-depth interviews. Interviews lasting 60–90 minutes each were conducted with the 15

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HR professionals. Five participants were interviewed on two occasions, generating a total of 20 interviews for the study. Emotion and emotional labour occur in the context of a personal narrative, history, present and anticipated future (Briner, 1999). Interviews were thus guided by the view that to understand emotion we need to know about the proximal event that triggered it, how the event came to have meaning, and what the consequences were. In a method similar to critical incident interviewing (Flanagan, 1954), participants were asked to give specific examples of workplace interactions. They were asked to describe the background and purpose of the interaction, who was involved, what happened, how they felt during and after, the emotions they displayed, and the outcomes. Where there was a discrepancy between felt and displayed emotions, further probes were used to understand the reason behind this. Interviews were taped and then transcribed for analysis purposes.

Diary measure – interaction records. The diary was based on the Rochester Interac- tion Record method (RIR; Nezlek et al., 1983) and followed methods used by Tschan et al. (2005). Following the first interview participants were asked to complete an ‘Interaction Record’ (IR) for interactions that lasted more than 10 minutes. Five par- ticipants completed the diary, with 28 IRs being returned. Those that failed to com- plete IRs stated that they could not find the time to do so. The IRs proved useful for producing examples of EL situations but the recorded data was ‘thin’. Examples given in the IRs were however explored during a second interview; in this way the recorded interactions were ‘brought to life’ and the IRs thus proved useful for reducing the retrospective elements of accounts. The data from the IRs was incorporated in the interview analysis process.

The above methods were deemed most appropriate given the limitations and prac- ticalities of the research context. Whilst the ideal may be to capture the ‘simmer and flow of everyday emotion’ (Fineman, 1993, p. 14) and to try and capture ‘real time’ emotion through the use of methods such as intensive ethnographies or participant observation, the highly sensitive and confidential nature of HR work as a research context meant that getting permission from all parties and access to employ such methods was not possible.

There are epistemological concerns regarding the ‘unknowability’ of emotion because it is often considered elusive, private, transient, and unmanageable (Sturdy, 2003). Many authors suggest that sometimes individuals do not know how they feel, do not understand their own emotions, or are not able to name their own feelings (e.g., Gerth and Mills, 1953), and this presents obvious problems for accessing emotion through self-report. Others highlight that emotions are often disguised to aid self- protection (e.g., Gabriel, 1999). Also, as Samra-Fredericks (2004) argues, the reliance on organizational members deploying a ‘language of emotion’ (Waldron, 1994) can obscure how expressions such as ‘makes me angry’ or ‘it’s so frustrating’ feed into split-second interactive routines.

Following Sturdy (2003, pp. 81–105), the position adopted here is that ‘emotion is no less knowable than anything else’ and ‘there is a range of possible and partial ways of knowing emotion’. The use of probing questions about actual interactions made it

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difficult (but not impossible) to ‘fake’ accounts as did the use of questions about opposite cases (i.e., when participants did not comply, or felt a different way). These methods yielded interesting data not only on EL but on how the participants perceive, experience, and speak about their role.

Analysis. Transcripts were subjected to systematic analysis using techniques associated with the grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1990).

In grounded theory research, data collection and data analysis are interrelated throughout the whole study, and unlike other methods where systematic analysis starts after all data is collected, the researcher is constantly moving between both processes. At the heart of the process is a ‘constant comparison method’ (Glaser and Strauss, 1967); instances of codes, concepts, and categories are continually compared with each other to highlight similarities and differences.

Analysis began with line-by-line open coding of each transcript. An initial list of codes was developed from the first interview and revised following analysis of subsequent interviews. Words and phrases used by the interviewee and deemed of importance to the research were given a short descriptor phrase or code. Codes that related to a common theme were grouped together into a concept using the constant comparison method, with in-vivo codes (words which were used by interviewees) being used where appropriate. Following open-coding, concepts were grouped together into categories. For example, codes in the ‘Rule Enforcer’ category included, amongst others, ‘toeing the line’; ‘correcting deviance’; ‘making others aware of standards’; and ‘rule enforcer’.

Concepts built from these initial codes included: communicating behavioural stand- ards to others, enforcing behavioural standards, and modelling behavioural standards. These concepts made up the eventual category of ‘Rule Enforcer’. This in-vivo code was deemed an appropriate one to use as a category as it captured the meaning of what was being described by participants. Each category was developed in this way by looking across incidences of occurrence and identifying concepts and sub-categories that could

be brought together into one core category. This process is referred to by Strauss and Corbin (1990) as axial coding – the data is put back together in new ways by making connections between a category and its sub categories.

Coding and categorizing the data however can lead to de-contextualization, so fol- lowing Charmaz’ (2006) recommendation, to understand the links and relationships between categories as well as contextual issues, the data were analysed on an interaction by interaction basis and then on a whole-case basis. So in a sense the line-by-line coding process created the ‘variables’ and analysing the interview on a whole-case basis pro- vided the background within which the variables work together. Subsequently a between-case comparison (interview by interview) allowed similarities and differences to

be highlighted. A process of memo-taking, where theoretical propositions were noted as they occurred to the researcher, helped with this process. At this point the researcher was moving continuously back and forth between inductive thinking, accessing the extant literature to aid interpretation and deductive thinking.

Emotional Challenges in the HR Role

FINDINGS

The management of feeling and emotional expression to achieve an organizationally appropriate emotional display emerged as a central aspect of the HR role. Despite not working at the customer interface or in an environment where emotional display rules and scripts are explicitly laid out and compliance monitored by a manager, the HR professionals here felt restricted in their emotional repertoire and pressure to conform to the emotional display requirements of their job role. As one participant put it:

There are rules at play in that no matter what arrives at your door you don’t express horror you don’t express complete amazement you would have a fairly blank face but when you are finished having that conversation you could be absolutely appalled at what is after going on but you don’t display that, because if a person is complaining about another person there is always two sides to every story, so even if you’re appalled at what this person has told you, the other person could have a completely redeeming reason for what is happening, so you wear a mask and you don’t show your emotions. (P7: Female, HR Manager)

The rules for emotional expression derived from multiple sources including wider norms of professionalism, HR occupational norms, and the individual’s own expectations for the role. They drove organizational expectations of participants’ behaviour and were reinforced through feedback from peers and the application of sanctions in the case of divergence. Failure to conform was perceived as risking personal criticism, negative evaluation, and in some instances negative consequences for the organization such as legal action. Avoiding such consequences was a key influence on participant behaviour. In the course of our analysis light was shed on how HR professionals perceive and talk about their role, responsibilities, and corresponding behavioural and emotional display expectations; these are summarized in Table I.

While the dimensions of the HR role and associated emotion displays are presented as discrete categories in Table I, it is worth noting that participants might recount enacting any number of these roles and displays in an unfolding interaction. For clarity we now discuss each role and its display rules in turn.

Being Professional

It was apparent that the notion of ‘professionalism’ structures and constrains the behav- iour of HR practitioners and reinforces a work identity that is built on self-discipline. Discourses of professionalism are pervasive for many white collar workers, however here our interest was in how participants recounted the emotional demands associated with their performance as a ‘professional’. At an operational level, being a professional HR practitioner involved being objective, emotionally detached and separating ‘facts’ and value-infused judgements. In turn this meant remaining calm, controlled, and measured; it prohibited the expression of unregulated emotions, as the following quote demonstrates:

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Table I. HR roles and associated display expectations

Role Expectation Display requirement Being professional

Maintains professional detachment Suppress overly positive and negative Displays a ‘can-do’ image

emotion

‘face of the company’ Display measured control Express positive emotion about self, work,

and the organization Suppress anxiety and negativity Rule enforcer

Communicates, enforces, and models Express social control emotions (e.g., behavioural standards

disapproval, reprimand) ‘guardian of the rules’ Honest broker

Upholds moral/ethical climate Display calm demeanour, impartiality, Promotes fairness

and objectivity ‘conscience of the business’ Champion

Provides support to employees and Express empathy, interest, compassion managers Friendly and approachable ‘listening ear’

Cheerleader Responsible for emotional climate Display positivity, enthusiasm, job Engenders enthusiasm for work

satisfaction, and pride in the company Manages own and others’ emotions ‘happy smiley people’

You should remain neutral even though you know the person is wrong . . . you don’t want to get people’s back up. You should listen, observe and be non-judgemental. (P4: Female HRD Specialist)

These expectations are also exemplified by the quote below in which the participant describes another HR colleague whom she believes to be a highly effective ‘professional’:

I think that sometimes there is huge drama here but she would never get stressed about it, she would never scream at anybody, never raise her voice, she would never be rude to anybody, she would be very discreet, call someone into an office, just like I think somebody professional should behave. (P13: Female, HR Specialist, Recruitment)

There was a general belief that displays of unregulated emotion (and in particular extremes of emotion) would not only be seen by others as unprofessional but would lead to the impression of incompetence, something participants were keen to avoid. For example, the participant below described his ‘unprofessional’ reaction when the man- agement team would not agree to his proposal and the result of that reaction:

I got annoyed at the meeting and I turned round and said ‘I thought I was working with an enlightened group but obviously not’ and got really defensive, sat back in the chair folded my arms and said not very much just nodded at people. I suppose I was taking it personally, acting the way I did was not the professional response in my view.

1269 . . . I got feedback from my manager to say I got defensive in the meeting which didn’t

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really help. (P1: Male, HR Vice-President) In this situation the individual showed his genuine negative emotions of frustration and

annoyance, however he felt his behaviour was inappropriate and he describes showing his emotions as taking it ‘personally’ and getting ‘defensive’, which is not the ‘profes- sional’ thing to do. This was in turn reinforced by the negative feedback he received from his manager. Integral to this view is that to be seen as competent and in control he is required to manage his own emotional display and indeed his feelings.

It appears that the powerful appeal of the discourse of professionalism is evoked and mobilized instrumentally by managers through organizational talk (e.g., ‘don’t get defen- sive’) and practices (e.g., feedback on inappropriate behaviour) to achieve organizational goals. High value is placed on the capacity to deliver what is required regardless of one’s personal values and feelings, and the needs of the company are invoked as super- ordinate. This pressure to conform to the professional ideal and to avoid the negative consequences of non-conformance drove many EL performances. In fact, it appeared that performing EL was critical to behaving professionally.

The findings above are consistent with Sachs and Blackmore (1998), who found in their interviews with workers, that being a ‘professional’ was code for being able to appropriately control one’s emotions. They also reflect much organization theory around professionalism (Martin et al., 1998) which emphasizes rationality and down- grades emotion and mirror anecdotal evidence that emotional detachment is equated with rational competence ( James, 1993), and emotional control is highly conducive to an individual’s corporate success (Harris, 2002; Jackall, 1988).

The emotion display rules associated with being professional were not seen as organizationally specific nor were they viewed as specific to the HR role. Rather they were deemed part of the general rules that need to be followed to ensure positive relationships at work and career success. Participants did however feel that the pressure to conform to these display requirements was more intense for those working in HR because of the nature of HR work and the particular role they occupy in the organiza- tion, as illustrated in the quotes below:

It just comes with the job and if you feel pissed off or having a bad day or frustrated people say ‘oh god, Jesus you’re very, very stressed today what’s wrong with you’ like you’re not entitled to have a bad day whereas if I was in another department people would think ‘oh she’s under pressure, she must have a big project on’, there’s leeway for them but none for us. (P5: Female, HR Generalist)

I think people put HR into a box or onto a platform, people nearly expect people in HR not to have a sense of humour, not to let their hair down, you know you are in HR, you should be the company . . . I suppose the bar is raised that’s the nature of it. (P12: Female, HR Director)

Herman (1968) talked of a kind of generalized inferiority complex of personnel manag- ers, and Legge (1978) and Watson (1977) found personnel managers were obsessed by

E. O’Brien and C. Linehan

their credibility with other management groups. The findings here suggest that concerns with demonstrating credibility and value still echo within the HR profession. Participants were not only concerned about the negative effect of non-conformance on their own professional image but were aware that as a representative of the HR profession how they behave during interactions can affect employees’ and other stakeholders’ feelings about the integrity and credibility of the HR role:

you are aware yourself that people are looking at you, they are making value judge- ments about you and your profession, particularly because HR isn’t seen as the value-added entity, you are determined to prove that worth and that value of your profession. (P14: Female, HR Manager)

The HR Director below explains that HR professionals must always wear a ‘mask of professionalism’ because they are the ‘face of the company’. They represent the company when dealing with employees in an emotional state and the ramifications of letting the mask slip can be serious:

HR is seen as the interface with the company, they are part of the company but if it is being ‘done onto them’ or if it’s retirements its HR people standing up, it should be their line manager or someone that deals with them on a day-to-day basis, but if you are representing the company on pay increases or if you’re standing in front of the labour court you are representing the company so you have to have an affiliation with an entity that doesn’t have a face, you are it. (P6: Male, HR Director)

The HR professional is the embodiment of the organization who is expected to become not only the face of the company, but the heart of it also. In fulfilling such expectations the role holder feels a pressure to wear a mask even when it doesn’t seem to fit. At times this can leave them struggling to reconcile how they feel with the expected display, as the following quotes demonstrate:

I suppose part of me felt my heart wasn’t in it but you know you still wore the company hat and followed it through. . . . It was hard, I felt it was hard to be real. (P11: Male, HR Manager)

I suppose if you are suppressing one emotion such as anger and you’re trying to display another emotion, sincerity, there is a mismatch and that’s not going to be congruent in coming across. (P8: Male, HR Manager)

Hochschild claimed that EL arose as workers struggled to reconcile the ‘ought’ with the ‘is’, and that clearly comes through in our participants’ accounts of their role. So, contrary to celebration in the academic world of the infusion of emotion into organizational life (Fineman, 1993), it appears that administrative rationality (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1995) is alive and well. The discourse of professionalism, which entails emotional control and suppression, is still deeply ingrained in organizational culture and display expectations and is mobilized to constrain behaviour. Interestingly, while

1271 professionalism is often associated with a lack of emotion (in favour of rationality), here

Emotional Challenges in the HR Role

we see that enacting a professional demeanour can involve significant feats of emotional labour. In fact, it seemed that the requirement to be ‘professional’ was a baseline role upon which all the other HR roles sat. As such, professionalism operated as a key driver for all of the recounted EL performances and interactions. However, additional role expectations were layered on top – ‘the bar is raised’ – for the model HR professional, creating further EL requirements that are specific to HR work. We now turn to these.

Rule Enforcer

A central part of the HR role is to specify and communicate the values, ethos, and behavioural standards of the company. Participants described an expectation for them to

be a ‘rule enforcer’ and ‘the guardian of the rules’:

I suppose the other rule is to be the guardian of the rules. . . . in many ways it can be the perceived image of the organization you know what I mean and I suppose you’re acting as conduit between the organization and the employee and from that point of view there is expectations on both sides which may not be the same. (P8: Male, HR Manager)

They talked about the need to maintain and reinforce acceptable standards of behaviour in relation to discipline and organizational policies such as absenteeism or equal oppor- tunities. Fulfilling this expectation often meant suppressing felt emotions in favour of a mandated display which included the expression of social control emotions such as disapproval or reprimand. For example, the participant in the excerpt below had described feeling angry and frustrated when a colleague (a senior manager) jeopardized

a disciplinary hearing by not following the script that they had previously agreed upon. The manager made personal comments about the employee’s appearance and the employee subsequently complained to the shop steward:

a manager was in the wrong and you have to be seen to . . . let that manager know exactly that, clearly what happened was unacceptable. I could display anger in my tone. . . . I would have been slightly more formal than previous meetings and my tone would have been sharper and the displeasure would have been noted. . . . it was controlled. (P6: Female, HR Manager)

This role holder described feeling a certain amount of empathy for the manager who acknowledged messing up. In this situation she deemed it appropriate to display the negative emotions of anger she felt but in a controlled way to ensure the ‘offender’ knew

he had done wrong. The rule enforcer role also extended to ensuring others managed their emotional displays in an acceptable way as the following excerpt demonstrates:

I would say to a manager tone down your manner, it is unacceptable to react hot-headedly and immediately we are trying not to have conflict openly and we are

E. O’Brien and C. Linehan

trying to have them react in a more conservative way, take a breath. (P2: Male, HR Manager)

Having to maintain and indeed model the ‘ideal’ standard of behaviour that all employees must aim to reach inevitably influenced many EL performances:

if we are the ones driving the policies and that stuff you have to be seen to toe the line, if you are not going to let anyone else fall outside the policies you can’t do it yourself. (P3: Female, HR Specialist, Compensation & Benefits)

Although participants bought into this role demand there was a certain element of oppression and an air of cynicism around the impossible requirement to be perfect. This is evident from the quote below in which the participant describes how the need to maintain emotional control was relayed to her by her manager:

‘manage your state please’ you know you had to completely manage your ‘state’ not even use [the term] emotions it was described as manage your state at work, it was over-played and totally ridiculous. (P13: Female, HR Specialist, Recruitment)