Social work, emotion management and the transformation of the welfare state

Drawing from the sociological and organizational scholarship of emotion management in human service work, our historical analysis elaborates on how external pressures and efficiency requirements jeopardize employees' ability to carry out emotional labour in the public sector. Building on the Finnish social workers' accounts published in a professional trade paper in 1975-2009, the article provides an insight into the emotional challenges and dissonances of interactive work. Findings The article suggests that social workers' emotional job requirements are deeply embedded in and influenced by the broader social context and changes in the welfare state. The article indicates how workers' emotion management underwent changes and readjustments from the heyday of the expansive welfare state of the mid-1970s, through the severe economic recession of the 1990s, and was bound by the ideological reform of the Finnish welfare policy in the 1990s and 2000s. Applications Historical prospect to emotion management shows social workers, social work students and the academic community how employees' emotion management has been gradually recognized as a crucial element of relational client work over the decades, but also how workers' emotional job requirements and demeanours are intertwined with broader societal changes. Second, emotion management research provides a solid framework to elaborate emotional and ethical dissonances which are embedded in social work more profoundly.