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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.

Emotion work benefits service organizations, but high emotion-workloads lead to negative consequences for employees. We examined differences between employees highly competent in emotion work (Experts) and those who are less competent (Novices). We found that Novices conformed to organizational level display rules, used simple strategies and felt overwhelmed by their emotion-workload. In contrast, Experts followed interaction level display rules, used proactive strategies, and found emotion work to be effortless. This suggests that emotion work competence can act as a firewall buffering employees from negative consequences. Hospitality organizations can benefit from encouraging employees to increase their emotion work competence.

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.

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 this paper is to illustrate how emotion display rules are influenced by relational, occupational, and cultural expectations.

The authors compare these influences by assessing anger and happiness display rules toward customers, coworkers, and supervisors across four cultures.

Overall, the findings suggest that anger can be expressed with coworkers, can be slightly leaked to supervisors, but must be almost completely suppressed with customers. In contrast, happiness expression is most acceptable with coworkers. Moreover, though culture dimensions (i.e. power distance and collectivism) do predict display rules with organizational members, display rules with customers are fairly consistent across culture, with two exceptions. French respondents are more accepting of anger expression with customers, while American respondents report the highest expectations for expressing happiness to customers.

The results support that several countries share the “service with a smile” expectations for customers, but these beliefs are more strongly held in the USA than in other cultures. Thus, importing practices from the USA to other culturally distinct countries may be met with resistance. Management must be aware of cultural differences in emotions and emotion norms, as outlined here, to improve the experience of employees of globalized service organizations.

The authors integrate social, occupational, and cultural theoretical perspectives of emotional display rules, and build on the small but growing research identifying variation in display rules by work target, specifically speaking to the globalized “service culture.”

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.

This chapter describes the role of service employees’ motives for emotion regulation in interactions with customers. To date, there has been little research and theoretical work on motives for emotion regulation in service work. The reason for this may lie in the fact that there is an implicit general assumption that employees regulate their emotions in customer interactions because of display rules given by the organization. We argue that service employees have more motives for emotion regulation than adhering to display rules. We propose that three fundamental motive categories which are relevant for general emotion regulation are also relevant in the service work context. Moreover, we argue that the different motive categories are important antecedents for the further emotion regulation process. We propose that depending on the motive category different emotion regulation strategies are used as well as moderating effects of the motives with an impact on the consequences of emotion regulation such as well-being. The chapter concludes by pointing to practical implications.

The purpose of this summary is to provide excerpts of selected Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Regulatory Notices and Disciplinary Actions issued in July, August, and September 2010.

The paper provides excerpts from FINRA Regulatory Notices and Disciplinary Actions.

Regulatory Notice 10‐32: Effective August 2, 2010, the Board composition and governance structure of FINRA Dispute Resolution, Inc. (a subsidiary of FINRA) will more closely parallel the composition and governance structure of the FINRA, Inc. Board of Governors (FINRA Board). 10‐34: The SEC approved amendments to FINRA Rule 8312, which governs the release of information 10‐36: Effective September 7, 2010, amendments to FINRA Rule 2360 (Options) extend the cut‐off time for the submission of certain contrary exercise advices (CEAs) by one hour to 7.30 pm Eastern Time (ET). 10‐42: Effective February 11, 2011, and May 9, 2011, are new FINRA rules that extend certain Regulation NMS protections to quoting and trading of over‐the‐counter (OTC) Equity Securities. 10‐43: On September 10, 2010, the SEC approved amendments to FINRA Rule 6121 (Trading Halts Due to Extraordinary Market Volatility) to expand the trading‐pause pilot, originally adopted on June 10, 2010, to include all stocks in the Russell 1000 Index and specified ETPs.

These are direct excerpts designed to provide a useful digest for the reader and an indication of regulatory trends. The FINRA staff is aware of this summary but has neither reviewed nor edited it. For further detail as well as other useful information, the reader should visit www.finra.org

Purpose: As specific emotional arenas, hospitals are characterized by the interweaving of various emotional requirements, arising from different sources of norms, rules, or guidelines. This study aims to highlight an often-overlooked dimension of emotional labor in healthcare by describing the coexistence of emotional rules (i.e. feeling and/or display rules) through a multilevel perspective (institutional level, cluster/department level, service level, ward level, professional level). Study Design/Methodology/Approach: These emotional requirements for nurses and nursing assistants are investigated through three sets of data (observation, interviews, and internal documents) in a French public hospital, focusing on two hospital services: three long-term care units (primary field of investigation), and five adult medical emergency wards (secondary field of investigation). Findings: The results of the analysis show the pervasive nature of emotional requirements which are intertwined and more or less implicit/explicit according to the level analyzed. In addition to organizational rules, professional and social emotional rules contribute to shaping emotional requirements, particularly through rules of “empathetic expression” and those of retenue bienveillante. Research Limitations/Implications: This research has contributed to showing the dynamic nature of emotional requirements and their appropriation and modulation by healthcare professionals. The qualitative methodology used allows for unique insights but limits the generalization of results. Originality/Value: This research has addressed various gaps in the existing literature by describing emotional requirements through a multilevel analysis, by outlining a set of rules that had not been previously described (retenue bienveillante) and by including the population of nursing assistants as well as nurses in a study on hospital emotional labor. Future research could envisage spatial analysis of emotional labor to help better understand emotional requirements' variability according to emotionalized zones.

Purpose: Work-related emotional exposure is a fundamental job characteristic in all kinds of service jobs from sales to law enforcement and corrections and from human services (nursing, counseling) to legal services. But formalized job descriptions are surprisingly silent about the emotional issues accompanying the jobs and roles service workers perform. This is surprising because formalized job descriptions are the foundation of job design, HR, and leadership practices that positively affect employee, customer, and organizational outcomes. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: This is a theory paper and review. To help clarify the emotional labor issues service employees confront, we explicate a model of emotional labor based on the attributes of jobs, roles, and professionalism. Findings: We define emotional labor as service work that exposes those who do such work to interactions with others that can arouse negative emotions. We propose that, while employing organizations define their jobs and employees craft their larger roles, professional norms and values also are a foundation for their emotional labor. Research Implications: We integrate this work-focused emotional labor model into the larger context in which such work occurs via theory and research on organizational climate. We suggest future research on this approach to understanding the antecedents and consequences of emotional labor work. We summarize the major research ideas of what should be the focus of such research and provide a hint about what an emotional labor climate scale might look like based on these ideas. Practical Implications: This chapter offers practical advice to HR managers about how to improve emotional labor. Social Implications: Better management of emotional labor can reduce employee stress and increase employee well-being. Originality/Value: This chapter develops an original model of emotional labor.