An exploration of the emotion management of faculty staff at a Swiss private Higher Education Institute

Abstract

The principal aim of this study was to obtain an understanding of the relative importance of emotion management for the Swiss private higher education sector, and for the lecturing profession in general. Extant literature has focused on the emotion management of teachers and lecturers working in the public sector but has somewhat overlooked the private higher education sector. A single case study design was selected for this research, which consisted of a well-established and highly regarded Swiss private higher education institute. Focus groups were conducted with three groups of faculty staff at the case institute. This was followed up by eleven individual interviews. Thematic analysis was then used to analyse the data, resulting in the identification of several core themes. The findings show that emotion management is an essential element of the lecturing profession within the Swiss private higher education sector. There was evidence of emotional labour in action, with participants enacting the various emotion regulation strategies as espoused throughout the literature. This study identified that ‘naturally felt emotions’ and ‘deep acting’ were the preferred emotion regulation strategies. The prescriptive and philanthropic categories of the typology of workplace emotion were found to be the primary motivators behind the faculty performance. This thesis has made strides in expanding the field by providing new insights into the relevance of emotion management for professional occupations, specifically those of faculty staff. Overall, participants reported more positive than negative outcomes associated with emotion management, suggesting less of a dichotomy of outcomes in comparison to previous studies. The findings show that a number of contextual factors also have an influence on the emotion management of individual lecturers. Backstage areas and humour were found to be the most common coping strategies which participants used to detach from the job. Unexpectedly, cultural diversity was considered as having implications for the emotion management of lecturers. The research findings represent a further step towards developing an understanding of emotions and their management in a private higher education setting.