Case 3

Case 3

Although disappointed that her original plan to interview employees has come to nothing, Rabea resolves to develop a slightly different project using secondary data which are publicly available.

First of all, she thought about researching how theme parks manage the emotions of their employees. But this still requires an ‘insider’ perspective, which she doesn’t have. So, she thought more about the ‘public face’ of theme parks. What information do these parks present to the outside world?

Rabea thinks again about the analytic concept that first grabbed her attention: ’emotional labour’. She reflects on whether theme parks might use their recruitment processes to attract certain types of people who the theme park predict will suit jobs requiring emotional labour. The organization might also have a public-facing ’employer branding’ strategy (e.g. Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004) to convey a particular image to potential employees (as well as those already working for the theme park) which conveys the sort of employee who might ‘fit’ in terms of organizational values and the behaviors and attitudes that entails.

Rabea focuses on the recruitment angle. Although she cannot find any data about precisely how many people are employed in theme parks there are numerous tables that she can download giving numbers of people employed in different parts of the service sector. She finds recruitment websites from theme parks as well as mediating recruitment agencies. There are job adverts, articles about employee development potential and the working culture, visual images showing employees at work, and social media uploads showcasing how it feels to work for the recruiting theme parks and how important employees are in creating the ‘magic’ for visitors. These are all artefacts created by the theme parks or their agents which – as they weren’t originally intended for research purposes – could be useful as secondary data.

Delving more deeply, Rabea also finds YouTube clips from theme park employees and from individuals who have been through the recruitment process. Some are disgruntled; others who’ve just been accepted for a job are overjoyed, and are even mirroring the ‘style’ of the theme park culture.

Having found this new source of data, Rabea amends her title, and goes to her project tutor with the new one: ‘recruiting for the smile factories: what is the public face of theme parks’ recruitment process, and how do applicants respond to it?

Questions

(1) Rabea has already obtained statistical, visual and textual material including visual images of employees, and recruitment adverts (combining text and imagery). What other secondary data could she use for her research?’

(2) Undertake your own search using online databases discussed in Chapter 8 and search engines such as Google or Bing for possible data to answer Rabea’s research question. Make notes about each secondary data source you find. Don’t forget to include the full reference including the URL and data of retrieval.

(3) What methods of data analysis could Rabea use for each of these types of data you have identified?