Spot the Disney in the modern society PART 3

Performance Labour

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Lastly is performative labour, it relates to employees having to behave like actors on stage (Bryman, 2004). The person who performs the experience is has the responsibility of doing well to ensure the experience is retained in the customer’s mind. One of the main elements is emotion labour which refers to employees having to convey emotions as part of their job. Displaying positive emotions is important because it affects the quality of service provided. In MacDonald’s restaurants all over the world, including Taiwan, have smiling and greeting customers politely as part of their standard operating procedures. This would allow the customers at Taipei’s MacDonald’s to respond positively to the meal received from the service staff.

The emotional labour is extremely important in an airline cabin crews’ line of work. The national carrier of Taiwan, China Airlines has a slogan of “with a new style, with a true smile”. This shows the importance of the cabin crews’ smiles which would affect an individual’s perception on the quality of service. Due to globalisation, more people are travelling by planes and they would expect the cabin crew to take part in the performance labour of smiling when providing their service, this includes all frontline staffs, especially those in the service industry which consist of the hotel staffs. This is also a way to differentiate one service provider from the others.

Taiwan's China Airline flight attendents

A reception with the staff smiling in a hotel in Kaoshiung in Taiwan

The influence that Disneyzation has on Taiwan is caused by globalisation.

Globalisation has brought technology change, media and time on the shifting of commodities which contribute to Disneyzation expanding its principles into the people’s everyday life. Technology change had increased the people travelling while the media increase the Taiwanese knowledge on world issues and to other cultures and the lesser time and amount spent on shifting commodities would increase international exports which would affect the 4 principles and affect Taiwan.