Emotional labor

About: Emotional labor is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3948 publications have been published within this topic receiving 112110 citations. The topic is also known as: emotional labour.

Beyond Tit-for-Tat: Theorizing Divergent Employee Reactions to Customer Mistreatment:

Abstract: Customer mistreatment is a ubiquitous and pernicious form of interpersonal mistreatment leveled by customers against employees. Service workers’ reactions to customer mistreatment have been traditionally viewed as tit-for-tat reactions in which service workers respond to customers’ aggression with retaliation in kind. However, this tit-for-tat account does not capture the broad range of possible service worker responses to customer misbehavior. We build the case for self-esteem threat as an overarching framework for divergent employee reactions to customer mistreatment, and explain how service workers’ behavioral reactions and emotional labor may systematically vary according to where service workers stake their self-esteem—in performance, in others’ approval, or in status—using contingencies of self-worth theory. Other features of the self-concept are identified as boundary conditions of the process.

Having control or lacking control? Roles of job crafting and service scripts in coping with customer incivility.

Abstract: Despite previous studies that examined factors that would help service employees cope with customer incivility, the role of employee-initiated job strategies has rarely been explored in the context of customer incivility. Drawing on the job demand-control model, we proposed that a high-control job strategy (such as job crafting) alleviates the deleterious effect of customer incivility on job performance through emotional exhaustion, whereas a low-control job strategy (such as service scripts) aggravates this effect. To test the proposed moderated mediation effects, we collected three-wave data from 272 hotel employees and their 54 team leaders over a 6-month period. As predicted, job crafting and service scripts performed contrasting moderating functions. Specifically, the customer incivility-emotional exhaustion relationship was weaker for employees who engaged in job crafting more often than for those who did not. Job crafting also mitigated the negative indirect effect of customer incivility on job performance through emotional exhaustion. In contrast, the customer incivility-emotional exhaustion relationship was more pronounced among employees who used service scripts more often. Service scripts further exacerbate the negative indirect effect of customer incivility on job performance through emotional exhaustion. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for occupational health research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Labor of Cute: Net Idols, Cute Culture, and the Digital Economy in Contemporary Japan

Abstract: This essay analyzes how the digital media economy harnesses young people’s search for meaningful work to develop new apparatuses and mechanisms of extracting value from activities that are not typically recognized as work. Drawing on interviews with net idols and an analysis of the digital infrastructure that evolved around the trend, the essay offers three arguments. First, it claims that the digital economy has adopted a particular mode of accumulation — the social factory — that has expanded sources of value extraction by blurring the boundaries between paid/productive and unpaid/reproductive labor. Second, this essay conceptualizes the net idols’ production of cute culture as emotional labor and claims that the digital media economy has effectively expanded the practices through which value is extracted from women’s unwaged labor far beyond the domestic sphere. Third, it demonstrates that young women did not uncritically embrace this logic. Rather, they insisted on using digital media to gain leverage in the labor market and improve their chances for upward social mobility. The essay concludes that, resonant with the ways in which women’s unwaged labor in the home was instrumental to maintaining the socioeconomic order of the high-growth period, women’s unpaid emotional labor remains central to a society in which labor precarity generates a demand for emotional labor. At the same time, by promoting to young people digital media as tools they can utilize to develop new skills, the digital economy makes the idea of unpaid labor more acceptable by repositioning it as a prerequisite to attain lucrative and meaningful work.

Articulation Work Skills and the Recognition of Call Centre Competences in Australia

Abstract: Debates over whether customer service work is deskilled or part of the knowledge economy tend to focus on single issues such as control, emotional labour or information management. Call centre work...

Staying engaged on the job: the role of emotional labor, job resources, and customer orientation

Abstract: Purpose Frontline employees face constant emotional demands in the course of providing services to their customers, which can impact job engagement. This study aims to investigate the influence of emotional labor (surface and deep acting) and job resources (having a mentor and availability of expressive emotional network resources) on employees’ customer orientation and their relationship to three dimensions of job engagement: vigor, absorption and dedication. Design/methodology/approach Using data collected from food service providers, a conceptual model based on the job demands–resources theory is developed and tested. Findings Findings show that having a mentor and expressive emotional network resources increases customer orientation, which in turn increases vigor, absorption and dedication. However, surface acting negatively affects customer orientation, which indirectly reduces job engagement. Originality/value Consistent with the main tenet of the job-demands and resources theory, it was found that surface acting reduces engagement, whereas job resources (expressive emotional network resources and mentorship) boost engagement. Moreover, the results suggest that the commercialization of human feelings still remains an important topic for service providers to consider during service interactions because its presence affects frontline service employee engagement levels.