The topic of emotions in the workplace is beginning to garner closer attention by researchers and theorists. The study of emotional labor addresses the stress of managing emotions when the work role demands that certain expressions be shown to customers. However, there has been no overarching framework to guide this work, and the previous studies have often disagreed on the definition and operationalization of emotional labor. The purposes of this article are as follows: to review and compare previous perspectives of emotional labor, to provide a definition of emotional labor that integrates these perspectives, to discuss emotion regulation as a guiding theory for understanding the mechanisms of emotional labor, and to present a model of emotional labor that includes individual differences (such as emotional intelligence) and organizational factors (such as supervisor support).

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Emotion regulation in the workplace: a new way to conceptualize emotional labor.

This article conceptualizes the emotional labor construct in terms of four dimensions: frequency of appropriate emotional display, attentiveness to required display rules, variety of emotions to be displayed, and emotional dissonance generated by having to express organizationally desired emotions not genuinely felt. Through this framework, the article then presents a series of propositions about the organizational-, job-, and individual-level characteristics that are antecedents of each of these four dimensions. Frequency of emotional display, attentiveness to display rules, variety of emotions to be displayed, and emotional dissonance are hypothesized to lead to greater emotional exhaustion, but only emotional dissonance is hypothesized to lead to lower job satisfaction. Implications for future theory development and empirical research on emotional labor are discussed as well.

The Dimensions, Antecedents, and Consequences of Emotional Labor

The study of affect in the workplace began and peaked in the 1930s, with the decades that followed up to the 1990s not being particularly fertile. Whereas job satisfaction generally continues to be loosely but not carefully thought of and measured as an affective state, critical work in the 1990s has raised serious questions about the affective status of job satisfaction in terms of its causes as well as its definition and measurement. Recent research has focused on the production of moods and emotions at work, with an emphasis, at least conceptually, on stressful events, leaders, work groups, physical settings, and rewards/punishment. Other recent research has addressed the consequences of workers' feelings, in particular, a variety of performance outcomes (e.g., helping behaviors and creativity). Even though recent interest in affect in the workplace has been intense, many theoretical and methodological opportunities and challenges remain.

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: Affect in the Workplace

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http://test.scripts.psu.edu/users/a/a/aag6/OBHDP.pdf

Is “service with a smile” enough? Authenticity of positive displays during service encounters

This article explores work-family relations from the perspective of the emotion management performed by participants in both spheres. We extend previous discussions of emotion management by considering how work and family roles vary in the types and degrees of emotion management they require. We then explore the implications of this conception of work-family role variations in type and degree of emotion management for women's and men's work-family relations, paying particular attention to gender differences in work-family conflict and work-family role overload. The framework developed here highlights the need to examine variability in the emotion-management requirements of social roles, and it calls for attention to workers' multiple role involvements in studies of emotion management and their effects on individuals.

Rebecca I. Erickson

Papers

Managing emotions on the job and at home: understanding the consequences of multiple emotional roles