Managerial Challenges of Emotional Labor Disruption: The COVID-19 Crisis in Mexico

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the knowledge of managing emotional labor during a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a disrupting event, particularly affecting frontline healthcare workers and their supervisors who faced pressures to manage emotions during their interactions with patients. Emotional labor has been studied in emergencies; however, the case of Mexico offers insights into an understudied context and a long and singular crisis. Drawing from multi-level storytelling interviews with medical managers, physicians, and nurses in hospitals in different states of Mexico, this article argues that COVID-19 blurred relationships between performance and outcomes of emotional labor. As the organizational goal focused mainly on saving lives, some workers intensified and performed emotional labor innovatively, but others deviated from feeling rules. Managers’ role became crucial for employees to abide by affective requirements facing disruption.

“Nobody wants to be a dead hero”: Coping with precarity at the frontlines of the Brazilian and Mexican pandemic response

“…On the other hand, data suggest that changes in attitudes toward work and clients may spill over in behavioral coping. Although this possibility deserves further theorizing, future research could explore emotional labor as a potential explanation of street‐level bureaucratic behavior (Dudau & Brunetto, 2022; Varela Castro et al., 2022). Furthermore, in terms of practical relevance, policy interventions that deal with the behavioral side of frontline coping and fail to attend the cognitive‐emotional aspect of frontline work could fall short of producing desired results.…”

“…suggest that changes in attitudes toward work and clients may spill over in behavioral coping. Although this possibility deserves further theorizing, future research could explore emotional labor as a potential explanation of street-level bureaucratic behavior (Dudau & Brunetto, 2022;Varela Castro et al, 2022). Furthermore, in terms…”

“…This points to the broader importance of analyzing psychological wellbeing and emotional labor as explanatory factors for frontline worker behavior and policy outcomes (cf. Brunetto et al., 2022; Dudau & Brunetto, 2022; Farr‐Wharton et al., 2022; Ogbonnaya et al., 2023; Varela Castro et al., 2022).…”

Agility of facilities management organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons learnt for future pandemics

“…The COVID-19 pandemic is a disruptive event which is a long and singular crisis (Varela Castro et al , 2022) that has consequences and negative impacts on FM (Rashdi et al , 2020). The theory relating to disruption and agility postulates that after the moment of experiencing the impact of a crisis or disruptive event, to ensure performance recovery, organizations need to mitigate the impact and be agile to recover from the disruption to finally achieve stability again ((Asbjørnslett, 1999; Sheffi, 2015; Calvo et al , 2020).…”

Pause But Not Panic: Exploring COVID-19 as a Critical Incident for Nonprofit Workers

“…In the context of nonprofits, we have evidence about the general stress of the pandemic to the sector as a whole and for organizations (e.g., see Grønbjerg et al, 2021 ; M. Kim & Mason, 2020 , Kuenzi et al, 2021 ; Stewart, Kuenzi, Walk, & Klippel, 2021 ), but limited evidence about how nonprofit workers have fared. One such example is from Varela Castro et al (2022) who examined the provision of emotional labor of frontline healthcare workers and the toll this took on them. Their sample includes both public and private workers and their inquiry is not concerned with the worker’s careers, but their daily work.…”