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Research suggests that “front‐line” service jobs typically require emotional labour owing to the high levels of interpersonal interaction inherent in such work. Although emotional labour can be performed face‐to‐face (in person) or voice‐to‐voice (on the telephone), little is known about whether the type of emotional demands and the relationships with strain outcomes differ according to mode of delivery. The purpose of this paper is to research these issues.

Relationships are assessed between three dimensions of emotional labour (emotional display rules, and the faking and suppression of emotions) and strain outcomes (psychological distress, work‐life conflict and job satisfaction) in a sample of 124‐cabin crew (face‐to‐face interaction) and 122 telesales agents (voice‐to‐voice interaction). The emotional labour dimensions that are significant predictors of strain outcomes for both groups are examined by multiple regression.

No significant differences were observed between groups in mean levels of emotional labour variables. A greater proportion of variance in all types of strain was explained by the emotional labour components for participants who interact with customers face‐to‐face but these differences did not reach statistical significance. The emotional labour dimensions that predicted each strain outcome varied according to mode of delivery.

Ways by which service sector organisations might counteract the potentially negative effects of performing emotional labour are discussed.

The study provides some initial evidence that the impact of mode of delivery in emotion work is worthy of further investigation.

The purpose of this study is to explore the links from self‐focused emotional labor (surface acting) and other‐focused emotional labor (emotional enhancement) to job satisfaction, affective commitment, emotional exhaustion, and intentions to quit.

The study employed a cross‐sectional survey of 363 nurses' aides and childcare workers.

Surface acting, a type of self‐focused emotional labor, was related to negative work outcomes (lower job satisfaction and affective commitment as well as higher turnover intentions and emotional exhaustion). Emotional enhancement, a form of other‐focused emotional labor, was related to positive outcomes (lower turnover intentions and emotional exhaustion) when performed for clients' family members, but not for clients.

The cross sectional design of this study limits the ability to map the temporal ordering of these relationships, and thus to determine if emotional enhancement is a job resource or response to positive work experiences. In addition, two helping occupations – nurses' aides and child care workers – were sampled, and thus, the findings may not generalize to other types of occupations.

This study adds to the research about job‐related emotional labor because other‐focused emotional labor largely has been neglected in previous research. In addition, it is the first to differentiate workers' emotional labor with different groups of clients (patients/children; family members).

Within public services there is a widely recognised role for workers who operate across organisational and professional boundaries. Much of this literature focusses on the organisational implications rather than on how boundary spanners engage with citizens. An increased number of public service roles require boundary spanning to support citizens with cross-cutting issues. The purpose of this paper is to explicate the emotional labour within the interactions that boundary spanners have with citizens, requiring adherence to display rules and building trust.

This is a conceptual paper which draws on illustrative examples to draw out the emotional labour within two types of boundary spanning: explicit and emergent.

Emotional labour theory offers a way to classify these interactions as requiring high, medium or low degrees of emotional labour. Boundary spanning theory contributes an understanding of how emotional labour is likely to be differently experienced depending on whether the boundary spanning is an explicit part of the job, or an emergent property.

Drawing on examples from public service work in a range of advanced democracies, the authors make a theoretical argument, suggesting that a more complete view of boundary spanning must account for individual-level affect and demands upon workers. Such a focus captures the “how” of the boundary spanning public encounter, and not just the institutional, political and organisational dimensions examined in most boundary spanning literatures.

This paper seeks to argue that leaders perform emotional labor whenever they display emotions in an attempt to influence their subordinates' moods and motivations.

This is a conceptual paper that integrates the literature on leadership with the research on emotional labor.

This paper develops 15 propositions that distinguish emotional labor performed by leaders from that performed by front‐line service workers.

The paper suggests that leading with emotional labor is a fruitful research topic, and that considerable research could be done in this area.

Instead of conducting business in a non‐emotional, “business‐like manner”, leaders would benefit by expressing their emotions in the workplace. Emotionally expressive leaders are more charismatic and are better motivators.

This is the first paper to develop a theoretical model that describes how leaders perform emotional labor; thus the propositions are original.

In this study, the authors examine the impacts of two facets of retail employees' cognitive support and affective commitment on emotional labor-related outcomes.

To test the study hypotheses, 521 retail service employees participated in the survey. By using the structural equation modeling, the results show that employees' perceived organizational support directly and positively employees' affective organizational commitment and emotional exhaustion.

By using the structural equation modeling, the results show that employees' perceived organizational support directly and positively influence employees' affective organizational commitment and emotional exhaustion. The extent of employees' affective organizational commitment directly and negatively influences emotional labor and exhaustion. Furthermore, employees' emotional exhaustion exerts an influence on retail employees' propensity to leave.

Drawing on social exchange and conservation of resources theories, this study contributes to emotional labor research and practices by examining factors that potentially influences employees' propensity to leave. For future studies, researchers can expand the proposed framework of the current study to other retailing settings.

Findings of the study suggest that retail organizations need to manage employees' support and commitment concerning to understand emotional labor.

The current study found that employees' affective commitment influences key emotional labor constructs including emotional labor and emotional exhaustion. Employees who have a high level of identification, involvement and emotional attachment toward the organization, they are less likely to feel of overload and inefficiency. Given the importance of emotional labor in the retailing setting, the proposed model and findings of this study contribute the existing knowledge of retail employees' behavior.

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.

The purpose of this study is to empirically test and extend knowledge of the effects of emotional labor of frontline service employee.

The authors examined the effects of emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) on frontline employee creativity, as well as the mediating effects of different kinds of job stress (hindrance stress and challenge stress) on the relationship between emotional labor and creativity. The research hypotheses were tested using data collected from 416 service employee–supervisor dyads in 82 Chinese local restaurants.

Results show that surface acting is negatively related to and deep acting is positively related to frontline employee creativity; surface acting is positively related to hindrance stress, while deep acting is positively related to challenge stress; and hindrance stress mediates the relationship between surface acting and creativity.

This study extends the consequences of emotional labor to frontline employee creativity from a cognitive perspective. It also advances knowledge about the effects of emotional labor on stress by classifying different kinds of job stress caused by different cognitive appraisals of surfacing acting and deep acting, and revealing the role of hindrance stress as psychological mechanism through which surface acting affects creativity.

The concept of emotional labor refers to the management of emotions in interaction with customers. This study aims to suggest an integrative definition of emotional labor. It develops a conceptual framework that helps organize and synthesize key insights from the literature, in an interactional and multi-level perspective.

This integrated framework consists in a mapping of key research themes resulting from a systematic literature review, which includes research in sales and marketing. As critical affective processes in sales have not been studied sufficiently, both in business-to-business and business-to-customer selling, this review also incorporates works in other research fields.

Sales representatives’ emotional labor must be considered as a bi-directional interaction with the customer in a multi-level perspective. Moreover, emotional labor has rather negative consequences for the salesperson (e.g. burnout and job stress), but may have positive sales and customer outcomes. Findings suggest that the expression of genuine emotions should be used during sales interactions. In addition, organizations should prevent customers’ negative behaviors (e.g. mistreatment).

Emotional labor key practical implications with regard to several management functions such as the recruitment, performance management and training (Ashkanasy and Daus, 2002) of the sales representatives.

Research on emotional labor in a sales ecosystem is scarce. It has largely covered service industry employees in contact with customers, but has not paid enough attention to sales representatives (Mikeska et al., 2015). The proposed integrated framework concerning emotional labor focuses on the bi-directional interaction between the sales representatives and their customers.

This paper aims to evaluate the literature on emotional labour in the health‐care sector and the benefits and costs of such performance for both the carer and the patient. The aim is to develop a new health care model of emotional labour that has implications for health‐care management in terms of policy and education as well as for future research in this field.

A new model to explain the antecedents and consequences of emotional labour within a health‐care setting is developed that builds on existing research.

The model distinguishes between types of emotional conflict to which emotional labour‐inducing events in health‐care settings might lead. The negative and positive consequences, specific to health‐care settings, of emotional labour performance are also outlined.

Emotional labour should be formally recognised as a key skill in facilitating the patient journey, with emotional skills being taught in innovative ways outside the formal classroom setting. Health‐care professionals should be offered training on coping with the effects of emotional labour performance. Finally, more research should be carried out to further develop the model, particularly in identifying causes of emotional labour within health‐care settings and in differentiating the effects that different kinds of emotional labour performance might have.

The paper draws together previous research on emotional labour within health‐care settings to develop a coherent model that can be used to guide future research and practice.

This study introduces emotional labor into an analysis of multiple dimensions of burnout in sworn and civilian employees across three law enforcement agencies.

Using data from a survey of law enforcement employees in a metropolitan police department, a full-service sheriff's department, and a state corrections agency located in the western United States (n = 1,921), we test the explanatory power of an emotional labor-based model of burnout.

Results partially confirm the lone prior study to examine civilian and sworn personnel. Sworn and civilian employees experience variant levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, though the underlying emotional labor correlates are significantly related to burnout for both groups. Further, we extend prior results by capturing multiple facets of burnout as well as contributing an emotional labor explanation for burnout, while controlling for individual demographic characteristics and agency type.

Law enforcement agencies rely upon non-sworn employees to support their missions. The experience of non-sworn law enforcement personnel is under-researched in both the emotional labor and law enforcement organizational literature. Burnout is a phenomenon that has high costs for both employees and organizations, particularly in the law enforcement context. Investigating the emotional labor experience of employees is critical for practitioners who are tasked with effectively managing both groups.

One previous study has investigated the emotional labor of civilians in law enforcement and used community-level predictions for burnout. This study builds on those findings by capturing two facets of burnout rather than the lone gauge of burnout used in the previous study. Furthermore, we use an emotional labor model to investigate emotional exhaustion and depersonalization reported by sworn and civilian personnel.