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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 aim of the research reported in this article was to develop a conceptual model that links emotional labor strategies performed by service employees to a number of relevant antecedents as well as to a variety of customer outcomes. We link emotional labor directly to the customer domain by examining how customers experience and react to emotional displays of service employees. Thus, we expand current emotional labor research which has predominantly focused on employee and organizational outcomes but has offered limited theoretical guidance as to how customers may be directly affected by emotional labor in the service delivery process. Specific research propositions are developed that offer insight into the antecedents and potential impact of emotional labor strategies on customer behavior. Managerial and research implications as well as avenues for future research are discussed from the perspective of emotional labor theory.

In this study, we proposed and tested a motivational framework of emotional labor. This model incorporates positive and negative affect, motivation to express positive emotions, emotion regulation strategies (emotion suppression, reappraisal, and naturally felt emotions), and job satisfaction. Based on a sample of 147 employees, results generally supported our hypotheses and indicated that employees’ motivation to express positive emotions leads to the expression of the naturally felt emotions and the use of reappraisal. In contrast, motivated employees used less emotion suppression in their work. Hence, employees’ motivation seems to facilitate the adoption of a more authentic stance toward customers. Moreover, employees’ affectivity impacted emotional labor strategies. Finally, replicating past findings, job satisfaction was associated with a more authentic demeanor. This chapter contributes to emotional labor theory by extending our comprehension of emotional labor antecedents, which have been relatively under-investigated by emotion researchers. Moreover, this study demonstrated that self-determination theory is a relevant framework to better understand the emotional labor process. Overall, this motivational approach to the study of emotional labor can lead to more extensive research on emotional labor antecedents.

While the main emotional labor strategies are well-documented, the manner in which professionals navigate emotional rules within the workplace and effectively perform emotional labor is less understood. With this contribution, I aim to unveil “the good, the bad and the ugly” of emotional labor as a dynamic theatrical performance.

Focusing on three geriatric long-term care units within a French public hospital, this qualitative study relies on two sets of data (observation and interviews). Deeply rooted within the field of study, the chosen methodological approach substantializes the subtle hues of the emotional experience at work and targets resonance rather than generalization.

Using the theatrical metaphor, this research underlines the role of space in the practice of emotional labor in a unique way. It identifies the main emotionalized zones or emotional regions (front, back, transitional, mixed) and details their characteristics, before unearthing the nonlinearity and polyphonic quality of emotional labor performance and the versatility needed to that effect. Indeed, this research shows how health-care professionals juggle with the specificities of each region, as well as how space generates both constraints and resources. By combining static and dynamic prisms, diverse instantiations of hybridity and spatial in-betweens, anchored in liminality and trajectories, are revealed.

This research adds to the current body of literature on the concept of emotional labor by shedding light on its highly dynamic and interactional nature, revealing different levels of porosity between emotional regions and how the characteristics of each type of area can taint others and increase/decrease the occupational health costs of emotional labor. The study also raises questions about the interplay of emotional labor performance with the level of humanization/dehumanization of elderly people. Given the global demographics about an aging population, this gives food for thought at a social level.

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.

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.

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.

Nursing, as a gendered occupation, is one that requires vast amounts of emotional labor to be performed. As careworkers, nurses are required to assume multiple roles at work: medical expert, companion, and personal care provider. Roles, or expected behaviors associated with different statuses, have the potential to spillover between work and home environments. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how nurses perceive their role-taking and emotional labor processes to influence experiences of work–family spillover.

Rooted in interactionist role theory, this investigation seeks to qualitatively examine how nurses assign meaning to their various roles and how they perceive their roles to influence work–family spillover. Using audio diary and interview data, this chapter proposes that nurses who practice role-person merger (Turner, 1978) and empathic role-taking (Shott 1979) will also perceive work–family spillover to be related to their caretaking roles as nurses. Three distinct themes emerged in this qualitative analysis related to how experiences of work–family spillover are influenced by the emotional labor demands of the job and the practice of empathic role-taking by nurses: (1) spillover related to required emotional labor is experienced both positively and negatively; (2) nurses actively exercise personal agency in an attempt to decrease negative spillover; and (3) nurses reported increased work–family spillover when they practiced empathic role-taking.

This analysis extends the literature in this area by demonstrating the connection between the structural influences on emotion, the individual perceptions of roles, and the subsequent experiences of work–family spillover.

In this chapter, we reanalyze the conceptual map of emotional labor in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of the construct. Our starting point is Ashkanasy's (2003) five-level model of emotions in organizations, which places emotional labor at the midpoint (Level 3): the interpersonal level. We argue here that emotional labor is a complex construct that can be viewed from different levels of organizational analysis. For example, it can also be considered as an organizational level variable (Level 5) and from the within person perspective (Level 1). More particularly, we posit that recent fragmentation of the construct of emotional labor in the literature has tended to divert the focus from its primary purpose: a value adding activity for the organization. In this chapter, therefore, we describe and discuss horizontal and vertical relationships between the key elements of the conceptual map of emotional labor and suggest directions for future research.

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.