Vem bryr sig?- En undersökning av svenska begravningsbyråanställdas känsloarbete

Sammanfattning: The aim of this master thesis is to examine service meetings in high-touch businesses from the perspective of the service provider. One of the purposes is to explore on what way emotional labour appears in the funeral directors everyday labour. The other purpose is to analyze how the funeral directors provide comfort to the bereaved customers. As a framework I rely mostly on the theory of emotional labor of Arild Russel Hochshild and on the papers of Sharon C. Bolton; different studies on the labour of funeral directors and the work of Liam Hyland and Janice M. Morse on comforting bereaved customers. My conclusions, based on interviews with five funeral directors, reveal that they experience emotional labour through the need of hiding their sorrow and compassion with the customers; the need of being the strong part even under hard emotional stress; by continually monitoring the customers and adjusting the behavior to them; and by dealing with conflicts among the customers on service meetings. I also found that funeral directors possess a significant tacit knowledge about comforting and sorrowing and that the stigmatization of the profession is although decreasing but still existing. Professional pride on getting the customers trust and after a well-arranged funeral was also present. The funeral directors in my interview provide comfort mostly through the different ways of Personal Comfort. Because of the circumstances in Sweden with less wievings then in some other countries, the importance of the Technical Comfort is not of significance, although increasing. I didn´t found any evidence of Mechanic Comfort, possibly because in Sweden the corps are managed on the mortuary at the hospital. This paper argues that funeral directors also provide comfort by giving the customer time and being listening to them.