Search results

We examine whether supervisor support and empathy moderate the relationship between customer injustice and employee display rule deviance through a reduction in employee anger.

Working adults (N = 214) completed an online survey assessing their experiences with customer injustice, feelings of anger, and the extent to which they deviated from emotional display rules over the past month. Participants also completed a measure of trait anger (a control variable), and they rated their supervisor’s general support and empathy.

Supervisor empathy (but not supervisor support) buffered the relationship between customer injustice and employee anger. In turn, reduced employee anger is related to lower display rule deviance. Country (United States vs. India) also moderated the effect of anger on display rule deviance; the relationship was stronger in India than in the United States.

Service industry employees typically are expected to regulate their emotional displays by displaying positive emotions and hiding negative emotions. Meeting these display rules is considered paramount to providing good service. Unfortunately, customers sometimes treat service employees in a disrespectful or unfair manner, and the resulting employee anger may cause employees to break emotional display rules. It is difficult to control customer behavior, but our results suggest that empathetic managers may help employees manage the negative emotions that result from customer mistreatment. Thus, selecting and training managers to show empathy may improve customer service by resulting in more resilient employees.

The link between emotion display rules and job strain has been well established. This chapter draws upon the organizational justice literature to propose a new individual difference, service emotion rule fairness (SERF), to predict job strain for service workers. We propose that when service workers believe that organizational control of emotional displays is unfair they have poor fit with the job and increased strain. In fact, in the survey and experimental studies presented here, SERF uniquely predicted turnover intentions and emotional exhaustion beyond individual and group characteristics. SERF was rated higher when displays to customers are perceived as a means to gain financial rewards or form relationships with others, supporting a self-interest model of fairness, whereas the extent that display rules made one feel controlled, SERF was lower. We also found evidence that those with more social and organizational power perceived that the requirements were fairer. Practical and research implications are discussed.

We examine how authorities' use of fair decision-making procedures and power benevolently shape workers' impressions of them as competent and warm, which serve as a mechanism whereby authorities' behaviors shape workers' emotional responses. We investigate how the role of these impressions differs depending on authority gender and consider whether emotional responses differ for male and female subordinates.

We conducted a between-subjects experimental vignette study in which we manipulate an authority's behaviors and gender. We use multigroup mediation analysis to test our predictions.

Authorities who employ procedural justice and benevolent power elicit reports of heightened positive emotion experiences and intended displays and reports of reduced negative emotion experiences and intended displays. These behaviors also enhance views of authorities as competent and warm. The mediating role of impressions differs by authority gender. Authority behaviors prompt reports of positive emotions through conveying impressions that align with authorities' gender stereotypes (competence for men, warmth for women). In contrast, warmth impressions mediate effects of behaviors on reported negative emotions when authorities are men, whereas when authorities are women, benevolent power use directly reduces reported negative experience, and procedural justice reduces negative display. Female respondents are more likely to report positive emotion experience and display toward male authorities and negative display toward female authorities.

By examining competence and warmth impressions as mechanisms, we gain insight into how the process by which authority behaviors affect worker emotions is gendered and shed light on micro-level dynamics contributing to gender inequality at work.

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.

Our understanding of Japanese supply relationships comes primarily from studying the automobile industry. This paper identifies three elements of the automobile industry that, although generally assumed to be widespread, are largely absent in the notebook computer industry, leading to a different pattern of supply relationships: a sizable pool of external suppliers; the feasibility of shukko and cross-shareholding to strengthen supply relationships; and the adequacy of these means to manage external supply relationships. This finding debunks the myth of a monolithic model of “Japanese-style” supply relationships and illustrates the importance of idiosyncratic elements of an industry’s environment on its supply relationships.

The ROV ground control simulator (Fig. 1) used in this multi-sensory research consists of two workstations: pilot and SO. At the left workstation, the pilot controls ROV flight (via stick-and-throttle inputs as well as invoking auto-holds), manages subsystems, and handles external communications. From the right workstation, the SO is responsible for locating and identifying points of interest on the ground by controlling cameras mounted on the ROV. Each station has an upper and a head-level 17″ color CRT display, as well as two 10″ head-down color displays. The upper CRT of both stations displays a ‘God's Eye’ area map (fixed, north up) with overlaid symbology identifying current ROV location, flight waypoints, and current sensor footprint. The head-level CRT (i.e., “camera display”) displays simulated video imagery from cameras mounted on the ROV. Head-up display (HUD) symbology is overlaid on the pilot's camera display and sensor specific data are overlaid on the SO's camera display. The head-down displays present subsystem and communication information as well as command menus. The simulation is hosted on four dual-Pentium PCs. The control sticks are from Measurement Systems Inc. and the throttle assemblies were manufactured in-house.

In this chapter, inventory and sales data from a small business with seven showrooms are evaluated to forecast future sales and maximize total profits. In each showroom, three major brands of ceiling fans are sold and a limited amount of products from each brand are displayed. Each showroom varies in their sales volume, display capacity, and profit margins. Using historical data, the optimal display configuration was determined for each showroom; that is, the proportion of products from each brand to display in the limited display grid, while acknowledging existing constraints. Next using the optimal displays, profit for the next year is forecasted. Finally a comparison is made between actual and forecasted results and profits pre and post the optimal product display.

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.

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.

Recent research on service interactions indicates that negative displays of emotion by service providers play an important role in customer perceptions of the quality of the service. In this study, we examined the relations between attributions of responsibility for problems and the displays of negative emotions by service providers in service interactions. We hypothesized that attributions of responsibility for problems moderate the relation between the negativity of service providers’ prior and subsequent emotion displays and the relation between the negativity of emotion display by customers and service providers. To test our hypotheses, we collected data from telephone service interactions in a large retail bank in the northeastern United States and measured the negativity of emotion displays by using the Dictionary of Affect in Language. Our results showed that (1) the negativity of service providers’ prior emotion displays predicts the negativity of their subsequent displays, and (2) this relation is moderated by the attribution of responsibility for problems.