The Hidden Emotional Work of Boundary Spanners in Higher Education: A Conceptual Paper with an Integrative Framework

Abstract

Boundary-spanning roles (BSRs) in higher education institutions (HEIs) encompassing academic administrators, student services professionals, industry liaison officers, research development managers, and widening participation coordinators occupy a structurally distinct and emotionally demanding position at the interface of multiple constituencies. Individuals in these roles are required to simultaneously navigate institutional demands, student expectations, external partner obligations, and collegial norms, all while managing and regulating their own emotional displays and inner states. Despite a burgeoning literature on emotional labour (EL) within service industries and, more recently, within academic settings, BSRs in higher education have received surprisingly limited conceptual or empirical attention as a distinct category of EL workers. This conceptual paper addresses this gap by developing an integrative theoretical framework that synthesises foundational EL theory (Hochschild, 1983), boundary-spanning literature (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; Williams, 2002), conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989), and identity theory (Stets & Burke, 2000) to illuminate the unique emotional demands, regulatory strategies, and consequences encountered by HE boundary-spanners. The framework identifies four primary antecedent domains: role ambiguity, constituent multiplicity, institutional hybridity, and relational asymmetry and maps these onto surface acting, deep acting, and natural acting strategies. Outcomes are theorised across individual well-being, role performance, and institutional effectiveness dimensions, moderated by professional identity coherence, institutional support, and relational density. The paper advances four theoretical propositions, offers implications for institutional design and human resource practice in higher education, and charts an agenda for future empirical inquiry. By  positioning BSR professionals as a substantively distinct category of emotional labourers, this paper contributes to both the sociology of higher education and the broader EL literature.