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Previous research on emotional labor has typically been conducted at the individual level of analysis, despite the fact that many organizations have incorporated work teams into their business model. The use of work teams turns emotional management into a group task on which employees work as a collective. The present chapter proposes a conceptual model that describes the antecedents and consequences of team-level emotional labor. We propose that work groups often impose positive display rules (express integrative emotion) and negative display rules (suppress differentiating emotions) on their members. Positive display rules generally trigger group-level deep acting, whereby teammates seek to change their internal feelings. Negative display rules generally trigger surface acting, whereby teammates retain their actual emotions but do not actually express differentiating feelings. These two dimensions of emotional labor, for their part, impact emotional exhaustion. Deep acting one's positive emotions lowers emotional exhaustion and surface acting increases it. We discuss the consequences of our model for workplace behavior, such as performance. We also discuss how the relationships involving emotional labor change when one considers these constructs at the group-level of analysis.

The purpose of the current chapter is to meta-analytically examine the nomological network around emotional labor. The results show that negative display rules, high level of job demand, frequent contacts with customers, and lack of autonomy and social support are significantly related to surface acting, whereas display rules, opportunities to display various emotions, and frequent, intensive, and long time contacts with customers are significantly related to deep acting. Further, people high on negative affectivity and neuroticism are more likely to surface act, whereas people high on positive affectivity and extraversion are more likely to deep act. In addition, surface acting is mainly associated with undesirable work outcomes, whereas deep acting is mainly related to desirable work outcomes.

This chapter addresses how emotional labor relates to effort; an important mediator in the relationship between emotional labor strategies and important outcomes. To better understand how effort functions in these relationships, a new way of understanding emotional labor strategies is considered. This new approach accounts for effort profiles associated with different types of emotional labor. Consequently, three distinct categories of emotional labor strategies emerge; cause-focused, symptom-focused, and avoidance actions. These new categories are contrasted with the current dichotomous understanding of emotional labor strategies; surface and deep acting. How these three distinct sets of emotional labor strategies are specifically related to effort – and thus to outcomes of interest – is discussed and propositions are made. The implications of, and avenues for future research afforded by this new categorization of emotional labor are discussed.

The chapter summarizes existing conceptualizations of emotional regulation and extends existing organizational behavior literature that focuses on emotional labor by the introduction of two processes new to the literature: emotional contagion exchange (ECX) and emotional restorying of labor. More specifically, emotional restorying may allow employees to cope with emotional contagion by converting surface-level acting to deep-level acting, in ways which benefit both employees and organizations. In explaining this process, this chapter constructs a model of multiple interplaying processes.

The purpose of this study is to provide preliminary insights into the relationships between self-monitoring, emotional expressivity, emotional labor, felt leader authenticity, and authentic leadership (AL) within a unique context – West Texas Baptist congregations. Using a sample of 40 Baptist pastors, we employed survey research methods and correlational analyses to explore the focal relationships. Our results revealed that self-monitoring is positively correlated with surface acting, yet negatively associated with AL, within our sample of West Texas Baptist pastors. Emotional expressivity is negatively related to surface acting, but not deep acting, and positively related to genuine emotional displays. We also found that surface acting is negatively associated with genuine emotion displays and felt authenticity, while felt authenticity and AL are positively correlated. However, no relationships between self-monitoring, deep acting, felt authenticity, and AL were revealed. Thus, we identified cases where leader authenticity may be threatened within an organizational context with strong emotional display rules, suggesting a boundary condition for AL. Additionally, we advance propositions gleaned from our research regarding the influence of the omnibus (e.g., community religiosity) and discrete context on leader emotional labor and authenticity. We conclude with practical recommendations for leaders seeking to balance authenticity with emotional display rules associated with unique roles and contexts, as well as recommendations for scholars seeking to conduct research in such settings. We also provide candid insights regarding the challenges we encountered in researching leader authenticity within a highly religious context.

In this chapter, we develop and present the Multi-Perspective Multilevel Model of emotional labor in organizations. This model is based on three perspectives: (1) a service requirement, (2) an intra-psychic process, and (3) an emotional display, each involving five levels of analysis: within-person, between persons, in interpersonal exchanges, in groups, and across the organization as a whole. Our model is differentiated from earlier characterizations of emotional labor in that we propose that the phenomenon begins with energy generation instead of energy depletion; and is neither a one-way nor a one-by-one service episode. We further proffer that the intra-psychic processes embedded in emotional labor represent a form of social self-regulation that impacts across multiple levels within service organizations. We conclude by discussing the implications and limitations of our model for emotional labor research.

This diary study tested some propositions to determine the effect of discrete emotions on three dimensions of emotional labor and their consequent effect on leaders and follower’s perception about leaders’ authenticity.

The data were collected from a cohort of city traffic police consisting 69 police officials at four different time points between their two shifts using experience sampling method. The data were analyzed using the latest technique known as latent growth curve modeling.

The statistical results demonstrated that negative emotions were negatively associated with deep-acting and three forms of emotional labor did not significantly affect followers’ perception about leaders’ authenticity. This study also demonstrated that surface-acting is not significantly associated with leaders’ self-perceived authenticity, but genuine-acting and deep-acting were negatively associated with leaders’ self-perceived authenticity.

This study also offers certain implications for policing officials for improve authentic behavior through daily emotional displays in policing organizations.

This study offers some practical implications for policing officials about emotion regulation strategies during policing practices with respect to the authentic sense of the leaders as well as the followers.

This study offers an insight about how emotional labor affects the perceptions of policing officers about the authenticity of their leaders in the context of traffic police.

We test a multilevel exploratory predictive model, examining the relationships between emotional labor (EL) and workers' affectivity traits at a philanthropic hospital, where EL involves a process of emotional regulation at work involving emotional display rules, regulatory strategies, and emotional performance. Specifically, we test a model of the mediation effects of regulatory strategies and the moderation effects of emotional demands.

Participants were 306 workers from 45 different units of a hospital institution, whose performance was evaluated by 30 supervisors. Since workers' emotional display rules could not be represented as shared, unit-level beliefs, we chose two critical demands to test our hypotheses: (1) demand to express compassion and (2) demand to conceal anger or disapproval.

Using multilevel analysis, we found evidence that deep acting mediates between emotional demands to express compassion and emotional performance. We found further that demands to conceal anger toward coworkers increase the strength of the relationship between negative affectivity and surface acting.

Theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed.

Display rules are formal and informal norms that regulate the expression of workplace emotion. Organizations impose display rules to meet at least three objectives: please customers, maintain internal harmony, and promote employee well-being. Despite these valid intentions, display rules can engender emotional labor, a potentially deleterious phenomenon. We review three mechanisms by which emotional labor can create worker alienation, burnout, stress, and low performance. Though not as widely discussed, emotional labor sometimes has propitious consequences. We discuss the potential benefits of emotional labor as well.

Based on a study of 523 medical sales representatives, the present study investigates the relationships among employees' perception about organizational image, organizational support, and the way they perform their emotional labor during customer interaction. As predicted, the study found support for a positive relationship of both perceived organizational support and perceived external prestige with the way in which employees perform emotional labor. The study further found the importance of perceived external prestige of the organization in influencing the relationship between perceived organizational support and emotional labor. Implications of the study to practitioners and researchers were discussed.