Search results

This paper aims to aims to extend emotional labor research by exploring whether the impact of emotional labor on customer satisfaction depends on the order in which different emotional labor strategies are used by employees. Specifically, the authors explore how the order effects of two emotional labor strategies – deep and surface acting – impact customer satisfaction.

The authors conducted two experimental studies in which participants interacted with service employees who systematically switched between surface and deep acting strategies during the service episode. In Study 1, participants watched a video clip depicting a service encounter in a bookstore. In Study 2, participants partook in a simulated career-counseling session.

The four different emotional labor strategy order effects differentially impact customer satisfaction. Consistent with theories of gain–loss effects, improvement and decline trends positively or negatively impact customers, respectively. Furthermore, results show that these trends impact customer satisfaction growth differently over time.

The authors only focused on two emotional labor strategies, and future research may benefit from extending the research to additional regulation strategies and/or specific discrete emotions.

The results suggest that managers may train employees in recognizing that customer satisfaction is not just driven by customers’ overall assessment of the interaction but also by their experience at different stages of the interaction.

Service marketing and management scholars have largely explored emotional labor from a between-person or within-person perspective, with little empirical attention paid to within-episode processes that focus on how employee behavior varies within a single service episode. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to demonstrate that surface and deep acting can be used simultaneously and dynamically over the course of a single service interaction in impacting customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between emotional labor, emotions, and job satisfaction among nurses, and explore the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between emotional labor and job satisfaction.

A cross-sectional study was designed with 168 nurses in Korea. Structural equation modeling and path analysis were performed to analyze data.

Surface acting correlated positively with anxiety and frustration. Deep acting correlated positively with enjoyment and pride but correlated negatively with anxiety, anger and frustration. Enjoyment and pride correlated positively with job satisfaction; anger correlated negatively with job satisfaction. Deep acting correlated positively with job satisfaction, while surface acting did not show a significant relationship. Enjoyment, pride and anger mediated the relationship between deep acting and job satisfaction.

This research expands empirical findings on nurses’ emotional experiences, by considering their discrete emotions rather than general affect. It is the first study to empirically examine the relationships between emotional labor, discrete emotions and job satisfaction, as well as the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between emotional labor and job satisfaction in the nursing field. The mediating role of emotions suggests that not only nurses and nurse managers but also hospital administrators should take nurses’ emotions into account to increase nurses’ well-being and their job satisfaction. Finally, differential influences of surface acting and deep acting on nurses’ emotional experiences and job satisfaction highlight the need for practical interventions to promote the use of deep acting among nurses.

This study confirms the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between emotional labor and job satisfaction in the nursing field. It encourages future research to pay greater attention to nurses’ emotions themselves along with emotional labor. Findings add an interdisciplinary aspect to research on nursing by assimilating psychological perspectives of emotion and emotion management research to this field.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how emotional labor strategies (deep and surface acting) impact engagement through stress via two different emotional displays (suppressing negative emotions and expressing positive emotions) in coworker-to-coworker relationships.

This study used psychological and temporal separation techniques to survey hotel managers (Study 1) and hospitality students with frontline service jobs (Study 2).

Across both samples, the results showed that surface acting was related to suppressing negative emotions, which was positively related to stress, deep acting was related to expressing positive emotions, which was negatively related to stress, and stress was negatively related to engagement, suggesting that emotional labor affects engagement through either deep acting or surface acting and their related emotional displays.

The results show that hospitality employees either genuinely express positive emotions as a strategy to deep act or suppress negative emotions as a strategy to surface act with coworkers. Both emotional displays were related to engagement, suggesting that employers should alter expectations for emotional displays among coworkers and train employees how to manage their emotions to have a positive impact on engagement.

The unique contribution of the current paper is showing how emotional labor is related to engagement in the context of coworker-to-coworker emotional labor, which is rarely found in customer-based emotional labor. The results also provide a better understanding of how surface and deep acting are used in a hospitality context, because the measures of surface and deep acting usually focus on broad emotions rather than discrete emotions.

Within the emotional labor (EL) literature, the paper's aim is to test for additional scale distinctions in surface acting and deep acting, using a “difficult client” referent.

Working with existing definitions and operationalizations across prior EL studies, an on‐line sample of 1,975 massage therapists and bodywork practitioners (M&Bs) was used to test the hypotheses. Hinkin's recommended three steps for scale development: item development, scale development and scale evaluation were applied. The M&B sample was randomly split to carry out exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and then confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). A smaller validation sample of 203 working adults was also tested using EFA.

Convergent support was found for EFA between the M&B and validation samples, as well as between EFA and CFA for the M&B sample. Two types of surface acting could be distinguished, basic surface acting (BSA) and challenged surface acting (CSA), while three types of deep acting could be distinguished, basic deep acting (BDA), perspective taking deep acting (PTDA) and positive refocus deep acting (PRDA).

This paper studies a unique sample, massage and body therapists, and the “difficult client” stimulus has not been formally tested in prior EL scale work.

The current study aims to examine the antecedents and outcomes of emotional labor strategies (i.e. surface acting and deep acting) among service employees in China. The study proposed employees’ perceived closeness with customers and customers’ socioeconomic status will predict deep acting and surface acting, respectively. It further examined the mediating role of emotional labor between perceived customer attributes and employee well-being (i.e. burnout and job satisfaction).

One hundred and one employees at a jewelry store in China completed a survey regarding their perceptions of customers, use of emotional labor and well-being (e.g. job satisfaction and burnout). Correlational and regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictors and outcomes of different emotional labor strategies.

Perceived closeness with the customer group predicted employees’ use of deep acting, whereas perceived customer socioeconomic status did not predict the use of surface acting. Deep acting was negatively related with burnout, whereas surface acting did not predict burnout. Deep acting mediated the relationship between perceived closeness with customers and burnout.

To maintain employee well-being, organizations can promote a service climate to enhance employees’ perceived relationship with customers.

The study specifies the interpersonal context in which employees use different emotional labor strategies; the perceived closeness with customers predicts less burnout via the use of more deep acting. This study also supplements the existing research on emotional labor based on a Chinese sample; deep acting predicts employee well-being.

This study aims to test the mediating effect of cross-selling behavior (CSB) on the relationship between sales manager feedback (i.e. output and behavioral) and sales performance, and the moderating effect of emotional labor (i.e. deep and surface acting) on this relationship.

The authors used two-wave multisource data: survey and objective sales performance (sales revenue) data collected from 300 door-to-door salespeople working at a South Korean cosmetics company.

The relationship between output feedback and sales performance was mediated by CSB. In addition, the positive relationship between output feedback and CSB was weakened by deep and surface acting, whereas that between behavioral feedback and CSB was strengthened by deep acting. Specifically, behavioral feedback had a positive relationship with CSB when salespeople engaged in a high level of deep acting. This relationship was not significant for low and medium levels of deep acting. The authors’ supplementary analyses indicated no significant three-way interaction effect between output feedback, behavioral feedback and emotional labor on CSB.

Data collection from door-to-door salespeople in a single cosmetics company undermines the generalizability of the present findings.

By exploring the boundary conditions that strengthen or weaken the effectiveness of manager feedback, this study provides insights into how the two types of manager feedback can be effectively used to promote CSB and sales performance.

This study offers a nuanced understanding of the relative roles of output and behavioral feedback in CSB and the differential moderating effects of emotional labor on the two types of manager feedback.

Service employees frequently engage in emotional labour to express emotions to customers that conform with organizational display rules. Previous studies report equivocal findings regarding the relationships among emotional labour, job satisfaction, and quitting intentions. This paper aims to shed additional light on the links by distinguishing two dimensions of emotional labour and predicting that job satisfaction mediates its relationship with quitting intentions, while gender and age moderate its relationship with job satisfaction.

Cross-sectional survey data from German service employees, entered into a structural equation model, test the study ' s hypotheses.

Job satisfaction partially mediates relationships between emotional labour and quitting intentions. Deep acting positively affects the job satisfaction of male but not female service employees. The surface acting-job satisfaction link is negative for female but not male service employees. The deep acting-job satisfaction link also is stronger for younger than for older service workers.

Conservation of resources theory complements and extends previous service research focused on employee-related outcomes of emotional labour.

The findings improve service managers ' understanding of how employees ' emotional labour drive job satisfaction and employee turnover.

This study is the first to consider both gender and age as moderators that help explain employee quitting intentions, as well as the first to find a positive effect of deep and surface acting on quitting intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how customer orientation affects frontline service workers’ deep acting and to what extent the effect is moderated by the severity of dysfunctional customer behavior (DCB). Service organizations usually want their employees to demonstrate sincere emotions during customer encounters.

The study employed a mixed method design using measured variables (e.g. customer orientation) and a scenario-based manipulated variable (i.e. DCB severity). Data from 237 service workers were used to investigate the theoretical model.

Results showed that perspective taking and emotional sensitivity mediate the positive effect of customer orientation on deep acting. Furthermore, the influence of emotional sensitivity on deep acting is positive when DCB is less severe, but becomes non-significant when DCB becomes severe.

Because the DCB severity is manipulated as a single event, future research can examine its influence based on employees’ experiences. Also, future studies may investigate other mechanisms to explain customer orientation’s effects on deep acting.

This paper provides service organizations an understanding of the key roles of emotional sensitivity and perspective taking in driving deep acting as well as the importance of monitoring DCB severity.

The study is one of the first in marketing to examine the different influences of DCB severity on important employee outcomes. This study also identifies two important mediators to explain how customer orientation drives deep acting.

Social media fatigue (SMF) has been widely recognized; however, previous studies have included various concepts into a single fatigue construct. Fatigue has typically been explored from the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) or stimulus-organism-response (SOR) perspectives. To further investigate SMF, the authors split it into the two constructs of exhaustion and disinterest. Furthermore, the authors introduced the concept of emotional labor and identified rules that may affect surface and deep acting strategies.

The authors designed and conducted a survey to collect data from social networking platform users.

Results from 364 users of social networking platforms supported most of the authors' hypotheses. First, most of the display rules affect the choice of deep or surface acting. Second, both types of acting lead to exhaustion, but only surface acting leads to disinterest. Third, discontinuance intention is affected by both types of fatigue.

This study contributes to SMF research by adding more antecedents (deep and surface acting) based on the emotional labor perspective and showing the impacts of communication rules on emotional labor. In addition, this study also distinguishes disinterest-style fatigue from exhaustion.

Performing emotional labour is required of customer-contact employees (CCEs) to regulate their emotions through acting to conform to organisational display rules. Prior research is focused on investigating the detrimental outcomes of CCEs engaging in emotional labour acting to meet these display rules and organisational-related antecedents. This study takes a fresh perspective to propose how acting deriving from job engagement is related to employee burnout. Emotional intelligence is modelled as a moderator in these relationships.

The current study focuses on customer contact employees who are currently employed within the banking industry located in the United States of America. Participants of the study were recruited using panel data through Qualtrics both symmetrical and asymmetrical methods were employed in this study to test the proposed relationships.

The findings show that, prior to including EI in the analysis, job engagement was negatively related to surface acting but positively related to deep acting. However, when EI was entered in the equation, the relationship between job engagement and deep acting became negative. EI was also negatively related to both surface and deep acting. EI significantly strengthens the emotional labour process of engagement towards emotional labour strategies as well as lessening burnout. The asymmetrical analysis offer more insights to the proposed relationships.

This study employs both symmetrical and asymmetrical methods to examine emotional labour, emotional intelligence and employee burnout. In particular, job engagement proposed as an antecedent to acting strategy is novel. The study offers some novel insights into emotional labour and emotional intelligence research. The findings have practical implications for HR practitioners and management in the service organisations.