ABSTRACT

This chapter considers why workers offer the performances of emotional neutrality, particular as part of service encounters. It explores the ways in which classical management theory sought to write emotion out of organising by presenting a rational, neutral and masculine face. The chapter examines how the contradictions inherent in the demands of bureaucracies and the demands of consumers open up workers to abuse and how such abuse serves as a major context for the performance of neutrality. Weber's account of the modern bureaucratic organisation is one in which individuals operate in strict accordance with objective rules, within the confines of the authority invested in their position and without fear or favour when interacting with clients. The chapter explains the ways in which emotional neutrality is employed as a technique used to suppress emotions felt whilst displaying unemotional behaviour, wherein the suppression of the emotion is the performance itself.