Work Pressure and Social Skills An Analysis Based on the Fourfold Typology of Emotional Labor

In the past decades, most studies on emotional labor have used the traditional framework developed by Hochschild, relating to deep acting and surface acting. Recently, the Bolton‟s fourfold typology has attempted to broaden this perspective by showing that emotional labor may not only bring negative consequences. Emotional labor may also bear positive aspects for the workers when it allows them to mobilize resources in order to do their job. Using the new framework of emotional labor, this paper aims to understand how the CSRs of a call center can apply different strategies of action in their work that are related to the four aspects of emotional labor (pecuniary, prescriptive, presentational and philanthropic). Results show that emotional labor is not always a constraint. It can also bring up the capacity of the workers to mobilize some of their social skills in order to give a sense to their work.