Maintaining norms about expressed emotions: the case of bill collectors

Administrative Science Quarterly, June, 1991 by Robert I. Sutton

Data Sources

I gained entry into this organization after a former student was hired there as a management trainee. She arranged a meeting with the facility manager, during which he gave me permission to conduct this study. I gathered these data over a three-month period. I made about 25 visits to the site and had about 20 telephone conversations with facility employees. I typed field notes after each visit and tape-recorded semistructured interviews. I used seven methods:

1. Interacting with a key informant. A training manager was my primary contact with the organization. Her job entailed training newly hired collectors, conducting in-service classes, and fine-tuning the computer system to facilitate collections. She began working at the facility 10 years earlier as one of the original 16 collectors. We spoke during most visits; conversations ranged from brief exchanges in the halls to a two-hour, semistructured interview.

2. Training as a collector. I attended a four-day class (four hours a day) for new bucket-three and -four collectors who had worked as collectors elsewhere. Lectures, exercises, and a detailed training manual covered such topics as handling different types of debtors, following debt-collection laws, using the note system to summarize collection calls, and using the computer system. My three classmates reported that, compared with their previous workplaces, this was a "higher class" operation because the law was followed closely, the computer system was sophisticated, and we were told to be courteous.

3. Working as a collector. After training, I worked as a collector for about 20 hours in bucket two. My first day, I spent the morning sitting with an experienced collector, listening to calls on a headset, watching his screens, and asking. questions. He seemed excited about the work, singing out before each call in a half-serious, half-sarcastic tone, "Let's get some money." After each call, and sometimes during (using a mute button while the debtor talked), he offered opinions of the debtor, explained why he used a given collection strategy, and shared his philosophy of debt collection. I spent the afternoon making calls under his guidance. After this brief apprenticeship, I worked three nights averaging four hours a night) making collection calls. I worked alone but often asked other collectors for help with the computer system or with debtors who presented complex problems.

4. Group interviews. I conducted two focus-group interviews, the first with five collectors from the "front-end" of the operation (buckets two, three, and four) and the second with six collectors from the "back-end" of the operation (buckets five and six and recovery). Each lasted about an hour and was recorded and transcribed. Prepared questions included those asking about the emotions collectors were expected to convey to debtors and how it felt to work as a collector. I also pursued other promising topics mentioned by collectors, since this was an inductive study.