Reference no: EM132681867

Case 1:

The magic and excitement of theme parks have enthralled Rabea since her first visit to the Ferrari theme park in Abu Dhabi, a few years ago. The characters, the enchanted atmosphere, the immaculate park grounds, and the stories told by the Ferrari theme park employees - all of this made such a memorable impression that Rabea would now like to use a theme park as the focus for her Masters' research project at Al Ain University.

Her interest in the sociology of work leads Rabea to read about theme park employees' accounts of their experience. These shed light on the burdens and troubles of being a theme park employee. She is particularly struck by the ethnography of the sociologist John van Maanen, who worked for three summers as a rides operator in a U.S. theme park and wrote up his experiences as a participant-observation ethnography of these workers (van Maanen, 1989).

Theme parks such as the Ferrari world in Abu Dhabi usually proclaims themselves as the 'happiest place on earth'. However, for employees, the picture may be less rosy. John van Maanen describes theme parks as 'smile factories'. He observes that theme parks' employees vie for status and respect in a highly-regimented employment structure where standardized rules and procedures ensure that grimy operations such as cleaning are almost invisible, so that customers only experience joy and pleasure (and perhaps buy more from the concession outlets and merchandising stores). He writes about how employees find tricks to subvert the rules; for example, having more than the permitted number of 'time-outs'. But more often than not, employees come to accept and buy into the theme park's culture. They 'glide into their kindly and smiling roles' with ease (van Maanen, 1989, p73). The success of this feat of social engineering is largely due, according to van Maanen (1989) and Bryman (2003), to the socialization process which employees go through.

A big part of the socialization process is achieved through influencing employees' emotions, or at least the emotional aspect of their interactions with theme park visitors. Hochschild (2003, p186) argued that for many service industries such as air-travel and hospitality, what used to be considered a private act of emotional display - idiosyncratic, spontaneous, and personal to a customer and service worker - may now be controlled, managed and standardized through organizations' training and socialization practices. This is perhaps the darker side of theme parks that Rabea never saw as an excited child, growing in Abu Dhabi. But with her interest in the sociology of work, she now feels that it reaches insidiously into all aspects of service work. Recently, scholars have talked of the 'emotional labour', which employees have to provide as part of their jobs. Their appearance, demeanor and emotional responses to customers are all aspects of work over which they usually have some control; but increasingly in organizations, employees' conduct is tightly scripted and regulated. It's not just a question of pretending to smile and be happy. The socialization process into the organization's culture and values aims to make employees want to smile all day.

Rabea wonders whether the stresses and strains of emotional labour have been ignored by many business researchers. She's particularly interested in getting the ‘insider' view, and settles on a provisional title for her Masters project: Inside a theme park: what are employees' experiences of emotional labour?

But what sort of research design would be best for doing this? Rabea has some friends at Al Ain University already working at the Ferrari world theme park, and wants to ask them if they can be interviewed for her project. However, having read van Maanen's (1991) ethnographic study she has a nagging doubt: would semi-structured interviews be enough to expose the emotional labour which these employees have to perform?

Questions
(1) Looking at Rabea's research question, is the research 'purpose' exploratory, descriptive or explanatory? Explain fully your choice

(2) Is Rabea's research design (based only on semi-structured interviews in one case study organization) likely to be sufficient to answer the research question?

(3) What are the possible issues associated with Rabea interviewing her university friends?

Case:

Rabea talks to her friends about asking the Ferrari world theme park if she can conduct in-depth interviews with ten employees about their experience of working there. They say she's unlikely to get permission: the time she wants to collect data is their peak season, so employees are unlikely to be released from their duties to be interviewed.
Rabea is disappointed; but more than that, she's now worried about whether she can save her project. How can she abandon it after spending so much time reading extensively on the context of theme parks, and the conceptual topics of emotional labour, workplace socialization, and how organizations 'manage' the emotions of their employees. Rabea arranges a meeting with her project tutor so that she can ask about next steps. She wants to be proactive and show that she's already thought about alternative research designs, but realizes that she might also need to re-think her topic. She notes down a number of questions to ask her project tutor:
(1) What's the difference between primary and secondary data, and what sort of secondary data could be relevant for the research project?
(2) Can I (Rabea) just interview employees about their emotional labour at the Ferrari world theme park without asking the theme park's permission?
(3) Can I use data from personal blogs and unofficial websites which expose grievances felt by employees?
(4) Is there scope for me to undertake an empirically-based Masters project on theme parks and emotional labour using only secondary data? If so, what kind of secondary data might be available that relates to emotional labour within the theme park context?

Questions
Imagine you are Rabea's project tutor. How would you respond to Rabea's above four questions?

Case 3

Although disappointed that her original plan to interview employees has come to nothing, Rabea resolves to develop a slightly different project using secondary data which are publicly available.

First of all, she thought about researching how theme parks manage the emotions of their employees. But this still requires an 'insider' perspective, which she doesn't have. So, she thought more about the 'public face' of theme parks. What information do these parks present to the outside world?

Rabea thinks again about the analytic concept that first grabbed her attention: 'emotional labour'. She reflects on whether theme parks might use their recruitment processes to attract certain types of people who the theme park predict will suit jobs requiring emotional labour. The organization might also have a public-facing 'employer branding' strategy (e.g. Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004) to convey a particular image to potential employees (as well as those already working for the theme park) which conveys the sort of employee who might 'fit' in terms of organizational values and the behaviors and attitudes that entails.

Rabea focuses on the recruitment angle. Although she cannot find any data about precisely how many people are employed in theme parks there are numerous tables that she can download giving numbers of people employed in different parts of the service sector. She finds recruitment websites from theme parks as well as mediating recruitment agencies. There are job adverts, articles about employee development potential and the working culture, visual images showing employees at work, and social media uploads showcasing how it feels to work for the recruiting theme parks and how important employees are in creating the ‘magic' for visitors. These are all artefacts created by the theme parks or their agents which - as they weren't originally intended for research purposes - could be useful as secondary data.

Delving more deeply, Rabea also finds YouTube clips from theme park employees and from individuals who have been through the recruitment process. Some are disgruntled; others who've just been accepted for a job are overjoyed, and are even mirroring the 'style' of the theme park culture.

Having found this new source of data, Rabea amends her title, and goes to her project tutor with the new one: 'recruiting for the smile factories: what is the public face of theme parks' recruitment process, and how do applicants respond to it?

Questions
(1) Rabea has already obtained statistical, visual and textual material including visual images of employees, and recruitment adverts (combining text and imagery). What other secondary data could she use for her research?'

(2) Undertake your own search using online databases discussed in Chapter 8 and search engines such as Google or Bing for possible data to answer Rabea's research question. Make notes about each secondary data source you find. Don't forget to include the full reference including the URL and data of retrieval.

(3) What methods of data analysis could Rabea use for each of these types of data you have identified?

Answer the question on the cases and also this questions:- Looking back at Rabea''s revised research title.

Answer the following:

1. What is the research purpose.

2. The research approach

3. Define the research strategy.

4. Suppose Rabea got permission to collect primary data what are the data collection tools that she can use?

5. Define the study population no need references max 5 line for each question