Purpose
This research investigates the politics of smiling as a central driver for employees to navigate power dynamics within the prevailing discourse at a Japanese retailer in Hong Kong. Existing critical management studies emphasize power in organizational language, often neglecting the role of employees’ emotions in sustaining discourse. This paper examines employees’ smiles as tools for legitimizing (sensegiving) and interpreting (sensemaking) discourse. It explores how the use of their emotional display influenced the outcome of the company’s attempt to legitimize discourse. This research divides the discourse process into five phases: formation, codification, implementation, monitoring and adaptation.

Design/methodology/approach
Using the critical sensegiving and sensemaking approach, this paper discusses how employees’ interpretations of corporate policies shape the perpetuation of dominant discourse and outcomes. Data were collected through the author’s long-term participant observation in the Hong Kong branches of Japanese retailers.

Findings
The formation phase discusses the emergence of a dominant discourse favoring Japanese practices in the company’s Hong Kong operations. Codification involves the conceptualization of standard smiles in customer service policies. In practice (implementation, monitoring and adjustment), employee smiles serve as tools for negotiating power—shaping careers, earnings and shift preferences. This paper argues that this discourse shapes organizational norms while employees’ sensemaking influences the discourse implementation. Furthermore, this paper highlights the transnational impact of Japanese culture in Hong Kong, which has shaped the way Japanese top management and local employees interpret the dominant discourse.

Originality/value
This study demonstrates the importance of discussing the display of emotions and employees’ intentions to understand their impact on the outcome of discourse implementation. This study also reiterates the significance of discussing the influence of one culture on another to understand the broader social context that affects the perpetuation of discourse.