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Employees and Economic Structures

 

            
             Since the last two decades, the economy structure has been facing a transformation in the nature of employee and work. There is a growing level of service sector work in the world, especially the interactive service jobs. According to Sheane's study (2011), nearly three-quarters of all jobs in UK are the service industry. Besides, service sector growth speed in economy proportion more than other sectors, and this trend is still continuing. In the service sector, the 'customer service' like emotional and aesthetic component of the employee are significant for its competitive strategy. Therefore, research on emotional labour and aesthetic labour in the service sector could provide more suggestions for employee relationships and organizational management. .
             Hairdresser is a typical occupation of interactive service work. Therefore, hairstylists are an ideal example to demonstrate emotional labour and aesthetic labour. On the one hand, they are workers who constantly need to manage their emotional display during long interactive work time while assessing and controlling their customers emotional state. On the other hand, they should also monitor their appearance and body language while they manage customers' appearance expectation.
             Therefore, this essay will separately analyse about why and how hairstylists perform emotional labour and aesthetic labour. Moreover, it will also show the potential impacts of emotional and aesthetic labour on these workers. Finally, finding the nature of interactive service work from the previous study. .
             Emotional Labour.
             The term of emotional labour was developed by Hochschild's classic (1983). The Managed Heart. It could be defined as 'the management of feeling to create publicly observable facial and bodily display; emotional labour is sold for a wage and therefore has exchange value' (1983). It requires employees suppress or induct their real mental emotions to sustain an outward appearance seen to be sympathetic, concerned, deferential.


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