Yrkesrollens ideal & praktikens verklighet - en kvalitativ studie om socialsekreterares emotioner och emotionshantering
(2022) SOPA63 20212School of Social Work
- Abstract
- The Swedish social services have undergone major changes in recent decades and the contemporary work context has shown to complicate for social workers to provide services that are in line with their professional ideals, which has been reported to relate to health impairment and high turnover among social workers. An extensive amount of research has examined factors relating to the work environment of social workers, yet little is known about the emotions and emotion management of Swedish social workers in relation to their contemporary work context. Drawing on Arlie Hochschild’s sociology of emotions and the selected concepts “emotional labor”, “surface acting”, “deep acting”, and “emotional dissonance”, together with Randall Collins’s... (More)
- The Swedish social services have undergone major changes in recent decades and the contemporary work context has shown to complicate for social workers to provide services that are in line with their professional ideals, which has been reported to relate to health impairment and high turnover among social workers. An extensive amount of research has examined factors relating to the work environment of social workers, yet little is known about the emotions and emotion management of Swedish social workers in relation to their contemporary work context. Drawing on Arlie Hochschild’s sociology of emotions and the selected concepts “emotional labor”, “surface acting”, “deep acting”, and “emotional dissonance”, together with Randall Collins’s theoretical concept “emotional energy”, this study examines how Swedish social workers handles the tensions between core values of the profession and the reality of practice. The study has a qualitative approach and was conducted through semi-structured interviews with five social workers, employed in the municipal social services in Sweden. The analysis reveals that social workers experienced a wide range of emotions, including positive emotions such as pride and wellbeing when they were able to engage in their meetings with clients and negative emotions such as helplessness and frustration when scarce resources forced them to work against professional beliefs. Such emotional dissonance was dealt with in different ways. In response to the negative emotions social workers developed three different emotional strategies which included to focus on what they could achieve, to compensate for the lack of resources by taking on extra work and to share negative emotions with other colleagues to let off steam. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9077138
- author
- Thörnros, Sara LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SOPA63 20212
- year
- 2022
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- Emotional labor, emotional management, social services, working conditions, Sweden
- language
- Swedish
- id
- 9077138
- date added to LUP
- 2022-03-17 09:12:54
- date last changed
- 2022-03-17 09:12:54
@misc{9077138,
abstract = {{The Swedish social services have undergone major changes in recent decades and the contemporary work context has shown to complicate for social workers to provide services that are in line with their professional ideals, which has been reported to relate to health impairment and high turnover among social workers. An extensive amount of research has examined factors relating to the work environment of social workers, yet little is known about the emotions and emotion management of Swedish social workers in relation to their contemporary work context. Drawing on Arlie Hochschild’s sociology of emotions and the selected concepts “emotional labor”, “surface acting”, “deep acting”, and “emotional dissonance”, together with Randall Collins’s theoretical concept “emotional energy”, this study examines how Swedish social workers handles the tensions between core values of the profession and the reality of practice. The study has a qualitative approach and was conducted through semi-structured interviews with five social workers, employed in the municipal social services in Sweden. The analysis reveals that social workers experienced a wide range of emotions, including positive emotions such as pride and wellbeing when they were able to engage in their meetings with clients and negative emotions such as helplessness and frustration when scarce resources forced them to work against professional beliefs. Such emotional dissonance was dealt with in different ways. In response to the negative emotions social workers developed three different emotional strategies which included to focus on what they could achieve, to compensate for the lack of resources by taking on extra work and to share negative emotions with other colleagues to let off steam.}},
author = {{Thörnros, Sara}},
language = {{swe}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Yrkesrollens ideal & praktikens verklighet - en kvalitativ studie om socialsekreterares emotioner och emotionshantering}},
year = {{2022}},
}