The Dignity of Working Women

Abstract

This article examines a five-star hotel in China's southwest Yunnan province where local management adopted the organizational template and service protocols of a U.S.-based transnational hotel firm and, at the same time, informally organized escort and sexual services for guests. The original organizational template evolved into a highly punitive labor regime that management considered necessary to discipline what they considered to be the “unruly” local employees. To my surprise, despite workers' antipathy toward management, they acted with the utmost respect toward customers. Why did managerial despotism not translate into surly service? The data reveal that professional female hotel workers take refuge in professional protocols that signal their moral distinction from sex workers who are informally attached to the hotel. These protocols of “virtuous professionalism” also require compliance to customers. The study shows how forging moral distinctions can figure centrally in the functioning of labor regimes. These moral distinctions also enable processes of firm localization.

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