Showing papers on "Emotional labor published in 2015"

Emotional Labor at a Crossroads: Where Do We Go from Here?

Abstract: Three decades after its introduction as a concept, emotional labor—regulating emotions as part of the work role—is fully on the map in organizational behavior and organizational psychology. As research has accelerated, roadblocks, such as fuzzy construct conceptualizations, assumed but untested processes, and methodological stagnation, have emerged. To provide direction to new scholars and suggestions to seasoned emotional labor researchers, we review theoretical perspectives and evidence for emotional labor and its (a) construct development and measurement, (b) chronic and momentary determinants, (c) prediction of employee well-being, and (d) influence on organizational performance. On this path, we introduce emotional labor as a dynamic integration of three components (i.e., emotional requirements, emotion regulation, and emotion performance), interpret personal and organizational moderators, and point to innovative new methodological approaches. Overall, we provide a new road map to jump-start the fiel...

The bright side of emotional labor

Abstract: Emotional labor (expressing emotions as part of one's job duties, as in “service with a smile”) can be beneficial for employees, organizations, and customers. Meta-analytical summaries reveal that deep acting (summoning up the appropriate feelings one wants to display) generally has positive outcomes. Unlike surface acting (faking emotions), deep acting does not harm employee well-being, and deep acting is positively related with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, and customer satisfaction. Emerging research also suggests that a third form of emotional labor, natural and genuine emotional labor, is a frequently used emotional labor strategy that has positive effects for both employees and customers. We examine how identity processes shape how employees experience emotional labor, and we maintain that when employees identify with their roles, emotional labor augments and affirms their identity. Person-job fit is an important moderator that influences whether emotional labor enhances or hinders employee well-being. Emotional labor may also have positive outcomes when organizations grant more autonomy and adopt positive display rules that call for the expression of positive emotions. Recent research also indicates that emotional labor strategies may improve leadership effectiveness. Research opportunities on the bright side of emotional labor are abundant.

Emotional labor actors: A latent profile analysis of emotional labor strategies.

Abstract: Research on emotional labor focuses on how employees utilize 2 main regulation strategies—surface acting (i.e., faking one’s felt emotions) and deep acting (i.e., attempting to feel required emotions)—to adhere to emotional expectations of their jobs. To date, researchers largely have considered how each strategy functions to predict outcomes in isolation. However, this variable-centered perspective ignores the possibility that there are subpopulations of employees who may differ in their combined use of surface and deep acting. To address this issue, we conducted 2 studies that examined surface acting and deep acting from a person-centered perspective. Using latent profile analysis, we identified 5 emotional labor profiles—non-actors, low actors, surface actors, deep actors, and regulators—and found that these actor profiles were distinguished by several emotional labor antecedents (positive affectivity, negative affectivity, display rules, customer orientation, and emotion demands–abilities fit) and differentially predicted employee outcomes (emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and felt inauthenticity). Our results reveal new insights into the nature of emotion regulation in emotional labor contexts and how different employees may characteristically use distinct combinations of emotion regulation strategies to manage their emotional expressions at work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)

Educational Leaders and Emotions: An International Review of Empirical Evidence 1992–2012

Abstract: The aim of the present article is to review the international evidence about emotional aspects related to educational leaders. The review focuses on empirical studies published in peer-refereed educational journals between 1992 and 2012. First, we address the importance of researching emotions for understanding educational leaders. Next, we present the method used in the production of this narrative review. The bulk of the article presents empirical evidence from 49 studies organized along themes. Three central themes have emerged in the review: (a) the factors influencing the leaders’ emotions, (b) leaders’ behaviors and their effects on followers’ emotions, and (c) leaders’ emotional abilities. Within each theme, we present subthemes that include summaries of the relevant key findings. The article concludes with several methodological recommendations and an outline of possible directions for future research.

Emotional Labor Dynamics: A Momentary Approach

Abstract: Emotional labor has been described as a dynamic self-regulatory process that unfolds over the course of customer interactions, with employees continuously monitoring and adjusting their felt and ex

Emotional labor threatens decent work: A proposal to eradicate emotional display rules

Abstract: Summary Emotional labor—the management of emotional displays as part of one's work role—has emerged as a growth area of study within organizational behavior and customer service research. In this article, we call attention to the human costs of “service with a smile” requirements with little benefits. We first review the evidence showing that requiring positive emotions from employees induces dissonance and depleted resources, which hinders task performance and threatens well-being. We articulate how formalized emotion display requirements limit self-determination by threatening the autonomy, competence, and belongingness needs of employees. Further, via an organizational justice lens, we argue that emotional labor is an unfair labor practice because employees in such circumstances are (1) undervalued by the organization (constituting distributive injustice); (2) disrespected by customers (constituting interactional injustice); and (3) self-undermined by organizational policies (constituting procedural injustice). We then argue for bringing light to the dark side of emotional labor with a “modest proposal”: Organizations and customers should abandon formalized emotion display expectations and replace such efforts with more humanistic practices that support and value employees, engendering positive climates and an authentically positive workforce. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The effect of teachers’ emotional labour on teaching satisfaction: moderation of emotional intelligence

Abstract: Teachers can be seen as emotional workers often needing to be sensitive to the demands that their work makes on their emotions, and skilful in regulating their feelings, but few quantitative studies have examined this issue systematically. Using hierarchical regression analysis to examine this issue, this study investigates teachers’ perceptions of the relationships among the emotional job demands, emotional intelligence, emotional labour strategies and teaching satisfaction, with a particular focus on the moderating role of emotional intelligence. The results of a survey of 1281 Chinese teachers reveal that teachers’ perceptions of emotional job demands and emotional intelligence significantly predict the three emotional labour strategies. Emotional intelligence significantly moderates the impact of emotional job demands on surface acting and expression of naturally felt emotion but not deep acting. Even after controlling for emotional job demands and emotional intelligence, deep acting and expression of...

Sleep quality and self-control capacity as protective resources in the daily emotional labor process: results from two diary studies.

Abstract: Daily emotional labor can impair psychological well-being, especially when emotions have to be displayed that are not truly felt. To explain these deleterious effects of emotional labor, scholars have theorized that emotional labor can put high demands on self-control and diminishes limited regulatory resources. On the basis of this notion, we examined 2 moderators of the daily emotional labor process, namely day-specific sleep quality and individual self-control capacity. In particular, in 2 diary studies (NTOTAL = 171), we tested whether sleep quality moderates the influence of emotional dissonance (the perceived discrepancy between felt and required emotions) on daily psychological well-being (ego depletion, need for recovery, and work engagement). In addition, we examined 3-way interactions of self-control capacity, sleep quality, and emotional dissonance on indicators of day-specific psychological well-being (Study 2). Our results indicate that the negative relations of day-specific emotional dissonance to all day-specific indicators of well-being are attenuated as a function of increasing day-specific sleep quality and that self-control capacity moderates this interaction. Specifically, compared with low self-control capacity, the day-specific interaction of emotional dissonance and sleep quality was more pronounced when trait self-control was high. For those with low trait self-control, day-specific sleep quality did not attenuate the negative relations of emotional dissonance to day-specific well-being. Implications for research on emotional labor and for intervention programs are discussed.

When regulating emotions at work pays off: a diary and an intervention study on emotion regulation and customer tips in service jobs.

Abstract: We investigated the relationship between deep acting, automatic regulation and customer tips with 2 different study designs. The first study was a daily diary study using a sample of Dutch waiters and taxi-drivers and assessed the link of employees' daily self-reported levels of deep acting and automatic regulation with the amount of tips provided by customers (N = 166 measurement occasions nested in 34 persons). Whereas deep acting refers to deliberate attempts to modify felt emotions and involves conscious effort, automatic regulation refers to automated emotion regulatory processes that result in the natural experience of desired emotions and do not involve deliberate control and effort. Multilevel analyses revealed that both types of emotion regulation were positively associated with customer tips. The second study was an experimental field study using a sample of German hairdressers (N = 41). Emotion regulation in terms of both deep acting and automatic regulation was manipulated using a brief self-training intervention and daily instructions to use cognitive change and attentional deployment. Results revealed that participants in the intervention group received significantly more tips than participants in the control group.

The effect of customer incivility on service employees’ customer orientation through double-mediation of surface acting and emotional exhaustion

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how customer incivility affects service employees’ emotional labor (i.e. surface acting) and the way surface acting augments their emotional exhaustion at work, and in turn, damages customer orientations of service employees. Design/methodology/approach – Using a sample of 309 department store sales employees in South Korea, a two-stage mediation model is used in terms of structural equation modeling. Findings – The results indicate that customer incivility is positively related to service employees’ use of surface acting; this, in turn, results in feelings of emotional exhaustion, which are negatively related to their customer orientation. That is, the findings of this study shows that the negative relationship between customer incivility and service employees’ customer orientation was fully and sequentially mediated by service employees’ surface acting and emotional exhaustion. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation is the nature of the ...

The emotional labour of gaining and maintaining access to the field

Abstract: The role of emotions in qualitative research receives increasing attention. We argue for an active rather than a reactive approach towards emotions to improve the quality of research; emotions are a vital source of information and researchers use emotions strategically. Analysing the emotion work of researchers in the process of gaining, securing and maintaining access to the Swedish judiciary, we propose that the emotion work involved is a type of emotional labour, required by the researcher in order to successfully collect data. The particular case of researching elites is highlighted. Emotional labour is analysed along three dimensions: 1. Strategic emotion work – building trust outwards and self-confidence inwards; 2. Emotional reflexivity – attentiveness to emotional signals monitoring one’s position and actions in the field; and 3. Emotion work to cope with emotive dissonance – inward-directed emotion work to deal with the potentially alienating effects of strategic emotion work.

Customer response to employee emotional labor: the structural relationship between emotional labor, job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction

Abstract: Purpose – This study aims to extend emotional labor theories to the customer outcomes by examining a theoretical model of how emotional labor performed by the service worker affects customer satisfaction in a mediated way. Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation modeling analyses partially support for our hypotheses from 282 dyadic survey data [i.e. service interactions customers (seniors) and service employees (caregivers)] from a home caregiver firm in South Korea. Findings – The results of our study found that employee’s emotional regulation strategies of deep acting and surface acting differentially affect customer satisfaction, and that employee’s job satisfaction mediates the relationship between employee’s emotional regulation strategies and customer satisfaction. More specifically, the relationship between surface acting and customer satisfaction is fully mediated by employee’s job satisfaction, whereas the relationship between deep acting and customer satisfaction is partially mediated ...

The Heart Work of Wikipedia: Gendered, Emotional Labor in the World's Largest Online Encyclopedia

Abstract: This note explores the issue of women's participation in Wikipedia through the lens of emotional labor. Using a grounded theory approach, we detail the kinds of tasks women Wikipedians choose to do and explore why they choose the work they do. We also explore the emotional costs of their labor and their strategies for coping. Our analysis of 20 interviews leads us to posit that the gendered and emotional labor required of many women to participate in Wikipedia's production renders it, problematically, a space of conflicting public and private spheres, motivated by antithetical open and closed values. In addition to other contributions, we believe this insight sheds light on some of the complex dynamics behind Wikipedia's observed gender gap.

Temporary and transnational: gender and emotion in the lives of Mexican guest worker fathers

Abstract: In this article I use the US H2A guest worker programme as a lens through which to analyse the gender subjectivities of Mexican transnational fathers. My qualitative findings highlight the ways in which the prioritization of productive over reproductive labour within the H2A programme exploits gender-based expectations within Mexican families, reproducing rigid gender divisions of family labour. Additionally, the subjectivities of guest worker fathers are influenced by cultural expectations as well as by the rurality and cyclicality of their lives. As fathers shift between the USA and Mexico, so do their gender subjectivities, symbolizing gender's fluidity. Findings complicate the oft-cited conclusion that emotional labour and sacrifice are the exclusive domain of transnational mothers.

How Emotional Intelligence Mediates Emotional Labor in Public Service Jobs

Abstract: Most public service jobs involve emotionally intense work demands. For this reason, the terms emotional intelligence and emotional labor have entered the lexicon of public service. The former refers to the ability to sense and regulate one’s own emotions as well as to sense others’ emotional state, while the latter refers to the exercise of emotive skills to get the job done. This study examines how emotional intelligence mediates emotional labor in the performance of work duties by using job satisfaction and burnout as criterion variables. Although findings are mixed with regard to job satisfaction, a statistically significant relationship exists in the mediation between emotional labor and burnout. Specifically, the ability to regulate one’s own emotions decreases burnout. Implications for training and development are discussed.

Smiling for a Wage: What Emotional Labor Teaches Us About Emotion Regulation

Abstract: “I’ve never thought of it that way before!” The graduate student who said this to me seemed sincerely surprised to learn about emotional labor, the study of emotion regulation in the workplace. Rep...

Emotional facet of language teaching: emotion regulation and emotional labor strategies as predictors of teacher burnout

Abstract: This study attempted to scrutinize the multidimensional nature of teacher emotion. Three emotion-associated constructs, namely, emotion regulation, emotional labor strategies, and burnout were studied within a single framework. In particular, it was hypothesized that English as a foreign language teachers’ emotion regulation and emotional labor strategies influence teacher burnout. The results yielded via structural equation modeling substantiated the negative role of these constructs in burnout. The emotion regulation was measured via the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire developed by Gross and John. The scale comprises two subscales: cognitive reappraisal (an antecedent-focused factor aimed at changing the way a situation is construed so as to decrease its emotional impact) and expressive suppression (a response-focused element targeted at inhibiting the outward signs of inner feelings). Emotional labor strategies were assessed through the Teacher Emotional Labor Strategy Scale designed by Yin. T...

Examining Men's Status Shield and Status Bonus: How Gender Frames the Emotional Labor and Job Satisfaction of Nurses

Abstract: (Hochschild 1983) coined the term status shield to theorize men’s status-based protection from the emotional abuses of working in a service job and hence their diminished need to manage emotions as compared to women. Extending this concept, the current study examines how gender operates not merely to shield men from emotional labor on the job but to also shape the relationship between emotional labor and job satisfaction. Using survey data collected from 730 registered nurses (667 women and 63 men) at a large Midwestern hospital system in the U.S., we show that in addition to engaging in less emotional labor than women, men benefit from their emotion management in ways that women do not. Gender moderates the relationship between two dimensions of emotional labor (i.e., surface acting – covering emotion and deep acting) and two outcome measures (i.e., job satisfaction and turnover intention). Results support theoretical claims that men’s privileged status shields them from having to perform emotional labor as frequently as women. Further, when male nurses do perform higher levels of emotional labor, they are shielded from the negative effects of covering emotion and their deep acting correlates with higher job satisfaction—a status bonus—compared to that of their female colleagues. Implications for gender theory, emotional labor, and nursing policy and practice are discussed.

Rising to the challenge: Deep acting is more beneficial when tasks are appraised as challenging.

Abstract: Cumulative research indicates that deep acting has a nonsignificant relationship with employee exhaustion, despite arguments that deep acting can be beneficial. To illuminate when deep acting leads to more positive employee outcomes, we draw on the resource conservation perspective to propose a within-individual model of deep acting that focuses on service employees' daily fluctuation of emotional labor and emotional exhaustion. Specifically, we propose that the ongoing experience of felt challenge is a within-person boundary condition that moderates deep acting's relationship with emotional exhaustion, and model emotional exhaustion as a mediating mechanism that subsequently predicts momentary job satisfaction and daily customer conflict handling. Using an experience sampling design, we collected data from 84 service employees over a 3-week period. Deep acting was less emotionally exhausting for service providers when they saw their tasks as more challenging. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion mediated the deep acting by felt challenge interaction effect on momentary job satisfaction and daily customer conflict handling. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the deep acting experience at work, while highlighting customer conflict handling as a key behavioral outcome of emotional labor.

Emotional Taint Making Sense of Emotional Dirty Work at the U.S. Border Patrol

Abstract: Poised within the borderlands between two nations, Border Patrol agents form the largest federal law enforcement organization in the nation, yet the public knows very little about agents themselves...

Workplace surface acting and marital partner discontent: Anxiety and exhaustion spillover mechanisms.

Abstract: Surface acting (i.e., faking and suppressing emotions at work) is repeatedly linked to employee negative moods and emotional exhaustion, but the consequences may also go beyond work boundaries. We provide a unique theoretical integration of these 2 emotional labor consequences with 2 work-to-family conflict mechanisms, mood spillover and resource drain, to explain why surface acting is likely to create marital partner discontent (i.e., partner's perceived work-to-family conflict and desire for the employee to quit). A survey of 197 hotel managers and their marital partners supported that managers' surface acting was directly related to their partner wanting them to quit, and indirectly to partner's perception of work-to-family conflict via exhaustion consistent with the resource drain mechanism. Anxiety from surface acting had an indirect mediating effect on marital partner discontent through exhaustion. Importantly, controlling for dispositional negativity and job demands did not weaken these effects. Implications for theory and future research integrating work-family and emotional labor are discussed.

The business of care: the moral labour of care workers

Abstract: Drawing on a case study conducted in a private residential care home, this article examines the emotional labour of care workers in relation to the moral construction of care and the practical experiences of work. An examination of the company's discursive attempts to construct, manage and demarcate its employees’ emotional labour was carried out alongside an exploration of the carers’ own interpretations of, and enrolment in, the care-giving role. The potential economic and emotional consequences of these occurrences were a key focus of the inquiry. The study found that carers, encouraged by the company, naturalised their emotional labour, and that this had contradictory consequences. On the one hand it justified the economic devaluation of the carer's work and left her vulnerable to emotional over-involvement and client aggression. On the other, it allowed the worker to defend the moral interests of those within her care and to see when those interests were in conflict with the economic motivations of her employer.

The emotional labour of health-care assistants in inpatient dementia care

Abstract: Although there is much written on the emotional labour of nursing, there is little research grounded in the experience of so-called ‘unqualified’ care assistants. This paper is drawn from an ethnographic study conducted with care assistants on three dementia care wards in one mental health trust within the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS). We describe the emotional labour carried out by care assistants in their attempts to provide personalised care for people whose cognitive degeneration renders conventional relationship-building very difficult, produces unpredictable ‘challenging behaviour’ and calls into question the notion of ‘feeling rules’. This context requires the ability to strike a balance between emotional engagement and detachment, and it is the complexities of this relationship that are the focus of this paper, arguing that a degree of detachment is a prerequisite to engagement in this context. In conclusion, we argue that the contribution of care assistants in this context needs to be better acknowledged, supported and remunerated.

Emotional job demands and emotional exhaustion in teachers

Abstract: Teaching entails many demands of an emotional and interpersonal kind. For the current study, emotional job demands were conceptualised as comprising three components: exposure to emotionally demanding situations, emotional labour (use of deep and surface acting) and work focused on the emotional well-being of others. Both emotional job demands and ‘non-emotional’ job demands (that is, general demands such as those pertaining to workload, time constraints and curriculum issues) were hypothesised to predict emotional exhaustion. Two resources, social support and confidence in one’s own teaching practices (teaching self-efficacy [TSE]), were expected to have main and buffering effects. Primary school teachers (N = 556) completed an electronic questionnaire measuring all study variables. Consistent with hypotheses, general (non-emotional) job demands, emotional demands, social support and TSE, each uniquely predicted exhaustion. In addition, TSE buffered the negative effect of deep acting on emotional exhaust...

Vulnerability and Emotions in Research Risks, Dilemmas, and Doubts

Abstract: Researchers are familiar with ethics applications that endeavor to ensure the safety of their participants, but only recently have they been urged to examine the short- and long-term effects of research on themselves and consider the risks to their own safety and well-being. This article considers some of the risks to researchers of engaging in research by exploring some emotional dangers the authors encountered while engaged in their own research. The authors use their autoethnographies to create a co-constructed narrative to identify some of the emotional risks that can be associated with being a researcher. The risks are discussed in terms of vulnerability, emotional labor, emotions as data or evidence, and emotionally sensed knowledges. It is Laurel Richardson’s argument that “the ethnographic life is not separable from the self” that informs the authors’ efforts to understand, rather than simply know, the potential of emotions in research.

The effects of emotional display rules on flight attendants’ emotional labor strategy, job burnout and performance

Abstract: This study investigates the effects of emotional display rules of an airline on the emotional labor strategies of flight attendants (i.e., deep acting, surface acting), job burnout, and work performance. Data were obtained from a survey of 230 flight attendants of a global airline company in South Korea. The results show that the emotional labor strategy performed by flight attendants plays an important role in mediating emotional display rules. Emotional display rules did not directly affect job burnout and work performance, but rather influenced the emotional labor strategy used by flight attendants. Among emotional labor strategies, deep acting enhanced job performance and reduced burnout, while surface acting improved work performance but increased burnout. Such results suggest that airlines can improve their flight attendants’ performance and reduce burnout by promoting the use of deep acting. This study provides a practical insight into why airline companies need to pay attention to how employees observe emotional display rules, and should select an appropriate emotional labor strategy to improve in-flight service quality over the long term.

The Value of a Smile: Does Emotional Performance Matter More in Familiar or Unfamiliar Exchanges?

Abstract: Purpose The purpose was to understand how service familiarity (i.e., the familiarity of the customer with the employee and service provided) operates as a boundary condition for the impact of employee positive emotional displays on service performance.

Professional rationality and the emotional labor of gendered caring in nursing

Abstract: This dissertation offers an understanding of how the emotional labor of caring by female nurses is manifested, and whether this has changed from what has previously been described in the literature. A hybrid of Hochschild‘s (1983) theory of emotional labor is used with concepts from symbolic interactionist and critical theory to guide this inquiry. From this lens, relevant concepts affecting emotional labor are considered in order to examine how the organization of work roles for nurses enable or constrain their ability to manifest a caring presence. As the healthcare delivery system and nurses‘ roles have changed dramatically over the past century, looking at how nurses‘ caring is configured into their work identity is useful for tracking changes in identity and career expectations. This work is important because there is some indication that market driven approaches focusing more on manipulating the perception of caring and quality care, are displacing the opportunities for caring by nurses. First, I review key terms essential to the study, particularly caring and emotional labor and then use theory and a review of literature on emotional labor through the lens of caring and gender. The specific research questions addressed in this research, from the qualitative data of female registered nurses (RN) are: ̳what is caring, how is it learned, what gets in the way of it and what facilities it?‘ Finally iv a thematic analysis of interview data is interpreted from a critical theory, symbolic interactionist and late capitalism perspective, with regard to the discourse of caring by nurses.