Sociological Sites/Sights, TASA 2000 Conference. Adelaide: Flinders University, December 6-8.

Emotional regions, off-stage support

and the privatising of emotional
p r o c e s s work
____________________________________

Maree V Boyle
School of Management
University of Queensland Business School
University of Queensland

Abstract
This paper demonstrates how emotional regions within an organisation influence the practice and quality
of emotional process work. An ethnographic study of an emergency service organisation over an
eighteen-month period found that the performance of emotional process work is a vital stage in the
overall performance of emotional labour. Interviews with emergency service workers also indicated that
a substantial amount of emotional process work occurs within one of three emotional regions within the
organisation Ð the Ôoff stageÕ or non-work region. The organisation in question, known here as the
Department of Paramedical Services (DPS), relies heavily on informal Ôoff-stageÕ emotional support, or
emotional support provided by significant others as quasi-employees. Peggy ThoitsÕ work on emotional
process work and GoffmanÕs work on regions are used to demonstrate how the individual management of
emotion and the organisational ordering of emotional regions are closely intertwined. Organisational
implications for the over reliance on off-stage forms of support are briefly discussed.

Introduction
The principal aim of this paper is to explain and discuss how the concepts of emotional regions
within organisations and the individual practise of emotional process work, which is part of
emotional labour, are closely intertwined. This discussion is based on qualitative field data
collected over an eighteen-month period within an emergency services organisation specialising
in pre-hospital emergency care. The organisation in question, the Department of Paramedical
Services (known hereafter as the DPS), could best be described as an emotion driven
organisation, where the performance of emotional labour, during and as a consequence of the
highly emotion charged events, are central to the raison dÕ•tre of the organisation.

The linkage between emotional regions within organisations and emotional process work will be
illustrated through a closer examination of the off-stage or non-work region within the
organisation in question. ThoitsÕ work on emotional process work and GoffmanÕs work on
regions will also help illustrate how, in this instance, emotional process work can be privatised
and moved out of the realm of organisational responsibility.
Emotional regions, off-stage support and the privatising of emotional process work 2

Emotional Labour and Emotional Process Work

Recent research on the links between the performance of emotional labour and emotional
dissonance indicates that a complex array of factors have both positive and negative effects on
the individualÕs emotional well-being in the workplace. These factors include the quality of the
immediate workplace emotional climate in which the service encounter occurs (Ashforth and
Humphrey 1995), the influence of gendered cultural norms (Wharton 1993), degree of job
control and routinisation (Leidner 1993), and the quality of organisational responses to stress
induced by emotional labour (Kunda and Van Maanen 1999).

Early work on the conceptualisation and operationalisation of emotional labour created a clear
distinction between emotion work and emotional labour (Hochschild 1979, 1983). Hochschild
defined emotional labour as the appropriate public level of display, feeling and exchange that
occurred between service provider and service recipient. Hochschild also argued that emotive
dissonance was an inevitable consequence of emotional labour because it resulted in a
transmutation of the private emotional sphere into the public commercial sphere. However,
emotion as a process involves the appraisal of a series of affect-related events, which may
involve the experience of discrete or private emotions (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996). Although
the context in which the appraisal and subsequent emotional regulation may change from a
public to private one, the process of appraisal, attribution and regulation of emotion is
essentially the same.

Therefore, I propose that emotional process work is an integral part of emotional labour, and is
actually an extension of the service provider-client interaction. In addition, I also propose that
the organisational response to this aspect of an employeeÕs work significantly influences both
the quality of the service outcome, but also levels of individual employee stress, fitness and
emotional health.

Emotional process work occurs before, during and after a service encounter, and involves a
number of strategies that enable the employee to maintain a normative emotional state. Thoits
(1984; 1985) explains that when emotional management techniques fail and employees are
unable to satisfactorily deal with ÔdeviantÕ or ÔoutlawÕ emotions, they then have to process this
failure as a violation of feeling or expression norms. Thoits cited two conditions that she saw as
central to the prediction of emotion work failure Ð the persistence of deviant or outlaw emotions,
and absence of social support. Thoits explains that when individuals are committed to competent
identity enhancement and are aware of a discrepancy between situational feelings and emotional
norms, attempts at emotional process work follow, and self-attributions of deviance occur as a
result of persistent failure to create an individual normative state.

ThoitsÕ work has implications for how emergency service organisations confront the reality of
work stress and the maintenance of appropriate emotional climates within the organisation.
Within an emergency service context, emotional process work occurs after a case has been
completed and involves a variety of strategies that are designed to assist the officer to return to a
normal emotional state. Emotional process work may be as simple as one officer acknowledging
to another officer that the previous patient was rude or obnoxious, or it may involve many weeks
of coping with a major traumatic event such as a plane crash. All officers ÔdoÕ emotional process
work, and the degree to which they successfully accomplish emotional normality varies
according to level of experience, degree of social support and ability to cope with the demands
that the emotional norms and feeling rules that the organisation place upon them.
Emotional regions, off-stage support and the privatising of emotional process work 3

Emotional cultures, regions and dramaturgy

Emotional culture within organisations consists of three components: emotional vocabularies
(Gerth and Mills 1953; Gordon 1981); emotional norms (Hochschild 1979, 1983; Scheff 1979,
1990; Gordon 1989); and meanings of power and status (Kemper 1978). Gordon (1990) also
differentiates between institutional and impulsive orientations within emotional cultures.
Institutional meanings of emotions are those given by organisational members when they are in
full control of their emotions. Members affect achievement and maintenance of institutional
norms, and in doing so continue to uphold and reproduce emotional culture.

In many formal organisations, the application of impulsive modes of emotional expression is

often considered as either forms of deviance or indicative of faulty socialisation (Gordon 1981;
Thoits 1990). However, permission to express impulsive emotion is granted to those with power
and status, typically middle and upper class men of anglo-celtic origin (Hochschild 1983; Pierce
1999). These differentiations also apply to relationships between clients and organisational
members. Those with greater professional status are less likely to witness impulsive orientations
to emotion than those with lower status (Hochschild 1983).

The concept of emotional region is derived from GoffmanÕs dramaturgical perspective.

Performance, which is a central component of an organisational region, is defined as Ôall the
activity of a given participant on a given occasion that serves to influence in any way any of the
other participantsÕ (Goffman 1959: 26). Performances are only successful when individuals can
show that their actions are genuine or ÔrealityÕ, while simultaneously sustaining a ÔfrontÕ that is
considered authentic (Goffman 1959: 28).

Successful performance is also staged by teams Ôwho share both the risk and discreditable
information in a manner comparable to a secret societyÕ (Goffman 1959: 108 cited in Manning
1992). Teams are organised by ÔdirectorsÕ who manage disputes and decide whom will take on
which part. Teams act in Ôfront regionsÕ, which are defined as spaces in which they perform for
their publics (Goffman 1959: 102-114). Teams Ôrehearse, relax and retreatÕ to Ôback regionsÕ,
spaces hidden from publicsÕ view when front region performances are Ôknowingly contradicted
as a matter of courseÕ (Goffman 1959: 110-114). GoffmanÕs conceptualisation of front and back
regions are used here heuristically to further develop FinemanÕs (1993) notion of the Ôemotional
architectureÕ of organisational culture, in which he suggests there exists physical spaces within
organisations in which different kinds of feeling rules apply.

The concept of emotional culture builds upon GordonÕs original conceptualisation, joining both
GoffmanÕs description of regional behaviour and audience segregation and the differentiation
perspective of organisational culture, which recognises the importance of sub-cultures.
Therefore, emotional culture can be observed within three ÔregionsÕ - front or onstage, backstage
and offstage. The front stage sector is where emotional labour is performed. The backstage
sector is where interaction with organisational members occurs and where emotional process
work is likely to occur. Offstage spheres are found outside the physical realm of the organisation
itself, such as family or household. Hosking and FinemanÕs (1990) differentiation between
frontstage and backstage organisational emotionality helps to illustrate how a full understanding
Emotional regions, off-stage support and the privatising of emotional process work 4

of the nature and consequence of emotional labour can only occur if it is considered within the
context of emotional culture.

Off-stage support: The privatising of emotional

process work
Although we donÕt get enough training in how to cope, the expectation is that you have to cope...So you can do
your job, you can let the tears flow but you still have to be efficient at what you are doing. At least until you get
back to the station. But that doesnÕt usually happen. You usually wait until you get home...
(ÒNickÓ, AO Rural No.14)

This quote illustrates nicely the connections between frontstage expectations and back and
offstage realities. The frontstage emotional culture deems that officers ÔcopeÕ under all
circumstances, regardless of the amount of emotional pressure placed upon officers. As
representatives of the DPS, the community expects officers to perform at their emotional peak
with patients - yet from an organisational perspective, maintaining emotional health is an
individual responsibility. That officers have to Ôusually wait until (they) get homeÕ is a telling
comment that indicates the lack of recognition afforded emotional process work as ÔworkÕ.

To state that spouses provide a significant amount of emotional support to DPS officers is
something of an understatement. The expectation that the family, particularly the spouse, will
provide off-stage emotional support is one based upon the assumption that a certain kind of
emotional gender asymmetry exists within heterosexual relationships. As Duncombe and
Marsden (1993, 1995) explain, this gender asymmetry is an indicator of a form of emotional
power, which is situated with the wider context of continuing gender inequalities of societal
resources and power. While the central feature of menÕs lives may be the rational, affectively
neutral workplace, Ôwomen carry the emotional responsibility for the private sphereÕ (1995:
150). This includes the performance of emotion work that sustains the relationship itself.

During earlier DPS administrations, spouses not only provided emotional support, but were also
intensely involved in providing ancillary labour to help run the organisation. Not only did
spouses assist with raising funds, they also provided secretarial assistance, and sometimes acted
as surrogate counsellors, especially in rural and remote areas. Thus, there was an expectation
that wives would be as ÔweddedÕ to the organisation as well as their husbands (Finch 1983).

While this reliance on womenÕs ancillary labour may have been exploitative in principle and
often in practice, the benefit of co-opting women into the service meant that the whole family
enjoyed considerable status within the community. Conversely, the local DPS officer was
ÔownedÕ by the community, which meant that officers and their families were expected to adhere
to strict moral and behavioural codes. This applied particularly to senior ambulance officers,
whose role was to care for the ambulance ÔfamilyÕ, as well as the whole community.

As community role models and representatives, officers stationed in rural and remote areas often
found themselves with no emotional support outside their family. Several rural officers
interviewed believed that community members viewed them as ÔaboveÕ feelings or emotion.
This hero status meant that officers were expected to perform in a superhuman fashion.
Emotional support was either something officers only received from their immediate families, or
something that ambulance officers as men did not need. Thus, officers were only ever the givers
of public emotional support, never the receivers. This situation was even more difficult for
young officers who had no significant other or spouse living in the community.
Emotional regions, off-stage support and the privatising of emotional process work 5

While most officers who work in urban and provincial centres do not experience this constant
merging of work and home, there is still an implicit assumption by the DPS that officers will
receive most of their emotional support off-stage. In this study the majority of officers
interviewed and/or observed were male and married with children. With the exception of one
officer, all officers admitted that they would find it difficult to do their job without the support
of their spouse. They also admitted that the emotional stress of ambulance work often placed
significant pressure upon their relationships. In some cases, they cite this as the main reason for
marital breakdown and subsequent divorce.

In terms of how spouses assist in emotional process work, officers believe difficulties often arise
when there is a tension between balancing how much he or she discloses to family members
about work, and the amount of process work an officer chooses to engage in individually. As
one officer illustrated, ÔprotectingÕ family members from the unpleasant and gruesome parts of
the job is, in itself, an extension of the workday. Therefore, emotional labour continues after
hours in the form of shielding the family from the extreme aspects of ambulance work. Frank, an
officer-in-charge, explains that ÔshieldingÕ his wife and children from the more unpleasant
aspects of his job was important:

É I think my wife has to be fairly unique to be able to put up with some of the stuff I bring home. But I
donÕt bring everything home to her. There are certain things that I wonÕt discuss with her. I told her not to
look at my textbooks. The pictures that are in them are just too graphic. I find it distressful to look at them
myself, particularly if youÕve got kids the same age as the kids in the pictures in these books.
(ÒFrankÓ, OIC Metro No.21)

Officers also reported that spouses become frustrated when an officer chooses to be selective
about how much disclosure occurs after a shift. As Drew, an officer of over twenty years
standing explained, there is a fine balance between deciding what the officer thinks is distressing
for the spouse, and guessing what the spouse will want to hear:

She can say, I can understand the nature of your job, but she canÕt identify with the job. If I go home
and tell her what IÕve seen, sheÕs got to now deal with that problem. And there are very few women
in that context who can deal with that situation. No matter how much they say, I want you to tell
me. YouÕve got to deal with a lot yourself and talk to people you can trust but still not totally keep
your family out of it. ThatÕs a mistake. YouÕre going to fall down in a big way if you do that.
YouÕve got to do a balancing act, you have to say, I can tell you this much. I can tell you this
happened, but I canÕt tell you that happened.
(ÒDrewÓ, AO Rural No.1)

Several officers reported that they negotiated ÔroutinesÕ with their spouses for dealing with
difficult shifts. It is not surprising then, that the longest serving officers were the ones who were
willing to discuss these routines and their relative successes or failures. The success of these
routines in defusing anger or frustration depended upon the spouse being committed to doing
this kind of emotional process work. For instance, an ambulance ÔcoupleÕ who have been
married for over twenty years have developed a routine whereby the officer ÔsignalsÕ to his
spouse if he needs emotional space when he comes home:

Over time my wife had learnt that if I walk in and my mannerisms are such, then sheÕll just walk out the
other door. SheÕll just go away and leave me alone for an hour or two. Until IÕve processed it and dealt
with it and put it where itÕs supposed to go. Then IÕll walk out and weÕll start from there.
(ÒAlanÓ, AO Remote No.1)
Emotional regions, off-stage support and the privatising of emotional process work 6

Learning when to Ôgo awayÕ is an expectation with which many spouses have extreme difficulty
coping, particularly younger couples with children. One young officer stated that his spouse
ÔhoundedÕ him at the end of every shift to tell her everything that had happened during the day.
When he refused to comply, she became frustrated and this often led to marital conflict. The
officerÕs main problem with this situation was that he had little private space in which he could
process the dayÕs events and emotions.

By their own admission, many officers became intolerant and irritable at what they perceive as
the triviality of life outside the DPS. Requests from spouses to behave like ÔaverageÕ men
outside of work and within the family environment, together with shiftwork and the ensuing
irregular sleeping and eating patterns, led to conflict about issues of support. One officer, who
had recently divorced after fifteen years of marriage, admitted that his inability to cope with the
emotional switch from work to home was one of the major contributing factors to the breakdown
of his marriage:

Why am I the Mr. Fixit for everyone? É IÕve fixed up fifteen patientsÕ problems today, and then I
come home and youÕve got a migraine and you want me to cook dinner, and I think, no! IÕve
knocked off. You cook dinner. You get very intolerant.
(ÒRodÓ, AO Metro No.9)

In addition to providing direct emotional support, spouses often have to deal with frequent
absences of the officer from family gatherings, sporting events and social functions. This
sometimes leads to tension within the extended family, as the spouse has to do the emotion work
of allaying fears as to why the officer is not in attendance. While the Ôabsent fatherÕ is not all
that unusual at school functions, for an officer involved in a traditional heterosexual relationship,
continual absences from family events may cause problems for the spouse in that the family may
view the relationship as dysfunctional or abnormal.

While there is no evidence to suggest that ambulance officers have a higher than average divorce
rate, there is some validity in suggesting that younger officers who have young children are
under considerable off-stage pressure compared with officers who have served for longer
periods and whose families are older and more established. It is argued here that younger,
married officers and rural officers have the greatest need to develop sound emotional process
skills, for it is these groups that may be at greatest risk of emotional burnout if their off-stage
support is inadequate or deficient. Emotional process work may involve something as simple as
a short amount of time and space away from family and friends, or it may be as complex as a
close relationship with a religious minister or health professional such as a psychologist.

Conclusion
Although the DPS is an organisation literally saturated with emotion, emotional support is
mainly viewed by the organisation as something that needs to primarily occur off site. While
emotional process work does occur during organisational time, particularly in backstage regions,
a closer inspection of the structure and culture of the organisation indicate a serious level denial
of emotion. Anecdotal evidence suggests that employees appear more likely to engage in acts of
resistance if an organisation fails to either recognise or legitimate the consequences of emotional
labour for front-line employees. In turn, this has implications for the overall level of individual
as well as organisational well-being.
Emotional regions, off-stage support and the privatising of emotional process work 7

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Contact Details:
Dr Maree V Boyle
School of Management
University of Queensland Business School
University of Queensland
St. Lucia Qld 4072
Tel: 07-33656751
Fax: 07-33656988
Email: m.boyle@gsm.uq.edu.au