A Balancing Act: Emotional Challenges in the HR Role

Elaine O'Brien and Carol Linehan

Journal of Management Studies, 2014, vol. 51, issue 8, 1257-1285

Abstract: Despite much academic work and the development of multiple typologies, we are still some way from understanding the HR role. There is a dearth of empirical evidence on HR professionals' work and recent models have been criticized for not adequately reflecting the challenges of trying to balance competing stakeholder interests. We approach this lacuna by focusing on an issue that has not been fully considered in relation to HR work – emotion. Drawing on the findings of a broader study into emotional labour, we highlight the emotive challenges inherent in the day-to-day practice of HR. We explore the disjunctions between ‘felt’ emotions and those actually displayed to meet differing stakeholders' expectations. We show how achieving an appropriate emotion display is a challenging pursuit given these competing expectations. Our contribution is to elucidate emotional labour in the under-researched ‘backstage’ professional context, and through our emotion focus to extend our understanding of the complexity of the HR role beyond current prescriptive models.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/joms.12098 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:51:y:2014:i:8:p:1257-1285

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... s.asp?ref=00022-2380

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Management Studies is currently edited by Timothy Clark, Steven W. Floyd and Mike Wright

More articles in Journal of Management Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().