When Emotional Labour Harms Corporate Image

This essay challenges the assumption that emotional labour primarily benefits organisations, demonstrating how mandated emotional displays can damage corporate image in cross-cultural settings. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of Amway in 1990s Poland, the research proposes the Cultural-Historical Filters of Emotional Labour model to explain the reception of imported management styles. The analysis reveals how standardised technologies of enthusiasm were refracted through the Polish cultural script of sincerity ( szczerość ) and a reactive post-socialist emotional regime. Triggered by critical media framing, this multidimensional dissonance led to a ‘spiral of silence’ and severe reputational stigma. The study concludes that historical legacies and collective memory act as decisive structural filters in global emotion management

Cognitive dissonance · Emotional labor · Enthusiasm · Sincerity · Emotional Labor in Professions · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Employment and Welfare Studies