To express or not? – Emotion labour and narratives on relationship ending

Abstract

<p> This study is about the emotional dimension of business relationships, specifically addressing the way boundary spanners speak about negative emotions, in circumstances where negative emotions are usually suppressed more than expressed. Suppressing negative emotion and expressing another, more accepted ones involves the use of emotional labour (Ashforth, and Humphrey, 1993). So far, research has neglected to study emotional labour that is involved in suppressing negative emotions in business relationships. A thematic analysis of narrative data shows firstly how emotional labour is part of manager's relationship ending narratives and secondly, provides ways of how the boundary spanners try to cope and defend themselves in making sense of negatively loaded relationship endings. The preliminary findings offer a rich, but heretofore obscured, account of manager's emotional labour in long term business relationships.</p>