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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.

Performing emotional labour is required of customer-contact employees (CCEs) to regulate their emotions through acting to conform to organisational display rules. Prior research is focused on investigating the detrimental outcomes of CCEs engaging in emotional labour acting to meet these display rules and organisational-related antecedents. This study takes a fresh perspective to propose how acting deriving from job engagement is related to employee burnout. Emotional intelligence is modelled as a moderator in these relationships.

The current study focuses on customer contact employees who are currently employed within the banking industry located in the United States of America. Participants of the study were recruited using panel data through Qualtrics both symmetrical and asymmetrical methods were employed in this study to test the proposed relationships.

The findings show that, prior to including EI in the analysis, job engagement was negatively related to surface acting but positively related to deep acting. However, when EI was entered in the equation, the relationship between job engagement and deep acting became negative. EI was also negatively related to both surface and deep acting. EI significantly strengthens the emotional labour process of engagement towards emotional labour strategies as well as lessening burnout. The asymmetrical analysis offer more insights to the proposed relationships.

This study employs both symmetrical and asymmetrical methods to examine emotional labour, emotional intelligence and employee burnout. In particular, job engagement proposed as an antecedent to acting strategy is novel. The study offers some novel insights into emotional labour and emotional intelligence research. The findings have practical implications for HR practitioners and management in the service organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an exhaustive review of emotional labor research from the hospitality and tourism literature by outlining the theories, the antecedents and the outcomes of emotional labor, as well as the underlying mechanisms (i.e. mediators and moderators) of emotional labor.

This study provides a qualitative and critical review of emotional labor research from the hospitality and tourism literature, providing insights into the trends and gaps in the literature.

The conservation of resources theory and affective event theory are the two most common theories in the reviewed literature. Emotional intelligence and personality are the most commonly investigated antecedents while burnout and job satisfaction are the most investigated outcomes of emotional labor. Stress and burnout are the most examined mediators of emotional labor and subsequent outcomes, such as commitment, turnover intentions and well-being. Moderators include leader-member exchange, job position, gender and climate of authenticity.

Four major gaps for research and practice are identified as follows: the lack of an overarching theoretical framework; inconsistency in how emotional labor is defined and measured; the vast majority of emotional labor studies are cross-sectional studies; and no research examines potential interventions to help service employees engage in effective emotional labor strategies.

This review offers a model providing a comprehensive framework that outlines the various antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators of emotional labor and corresponding theories for future research.

This study investigates the effect of authentic leadership on service employees’ emotional labour strategies, surface acting and deep acting, from a human energy perspective.

A three-wave survey was conducted in a hotel chain in China, and 347 valid responses were obtained. Mplus software was used for structural equation modelling and bootstrapping analysis.

This study finds the following: authentic leadership predicts service employees’ emotional labour strategies; job insecurity mediates the influence of authentic leadership on surface acting but not on deep acting; relational energy mediates both surface and deep acting; and relational energy has more negative (positive) indirect effects than job insecurity.

The findings provide hospitality managers with insights into how to improve service employees’ capacity for emotional regulation. Hospitality managers should show more authenticity, pay attention to subordinates’ energy level and select and recruit candidates with positive energy traits. Hospitality organisations should encourage, select and train managers to behave as authentic leaders.

This study links authentic leadership with service employees’ emotional management in the hospitality industry. Moreover, it demonstrates the energising function of authentic leadership and introduces the new perspective of human energy to emotional labour research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of emotional labour on frontline employees' emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction within the hotel industry.

The quantitative research approach was employed by administering questionnaires to 205 frontline employees from 16 luxury hotels in the Accra Metropolis, out of which 194 questionnaires were retrieved and analysed.

The results showed that surface acting was positively associated with emotional exhaustion, while deep and genuine acting were negatively associated with emotional exhaustion. In addition, both deep and genuine acting related positively with job satisfaction, while surface acting was negatively associated with job satisfaction.

A lackadaisical attitude from hotel management and employees towards data collection was encountered. Also, the study area had very few upscale hotels, making the sample for the study relatively small. Further, since this study was taken from the African perspective, readers should be mindful of generalisation of the results.

This paper is one of the pioneers to have assessed the relationships between emotional labour, job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion in the African hospitality context. The study contributes to hospitality management literature by explaining how the acting strategies of emotional labour affect frontline employees in the hotel industry. A better understanding of emotional labour will help both management and frontline employees to employ the appropriate acting strategy in any given situation they encounter in the course of their service delivery, to reduce the emotional drain they face in handling especially difficult customers and to increase frontline employees' job satisfaction.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is crucial to determine the emotional labor (EL) strategies and satisfaction of teachers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships of EI with EL strategies, emotional exhaustion and teaching satisfaction (TS) of secondary teachers in private schools.

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data conveniently from 322 secondary teachers working in 22 private schools.

Results indicate that teachers’ EI positively affect surface acting, expression of naturally felt emotions (ENFE) and TS. Surface acting and ENFE are positively related with TS. Deep acting and ENFE exhibit positive relations with emotional exhaustion of teachers. The study also confirms direct as well as indirect effects of EI on TS through surface acting and ENFE.

This study recommends teachers to make a higher use of surface acting and ENFE because they produce the most TS and the least emotional exhaustion.

This is the first study that examines the mediating role of EL strategies for EI and TS.

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 study aimed to test the antecedents and consequences of emotional labor (EL) acting strategies in the hotel industry. More specifically, the purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of emotional intelligence (EI) on the relationships among EL acting strategies, emotional exhaustion (EE) and service recovery performance (SRP).

The survey was administered in five‐star hotels in Korea. Frontline employees of the hotels participated in the survey and a total of 353 returned questionnaires were used for data analysis.

The research confirmed the importance of EI in the context of EL. The paper provided empirical evidence that EI affected the EL acting strategies and their consequential behavioral outcomes.

The study suggests that hospitality managers must find ways to elevate employees' EI level. Performance management processes should incorporate identification and positive reinforcement of EL acting strategies that enhance SRP and customer satisfaction.

This study explored the under‐researched subject of EL and its role within a hospitality industry context. The study is among the first to examine EI as an emotional resource, EL acting strategies, EE and SRP as a form of job‐related performance simultaneously.

Based on the service-profit chain perspective, this study investigates whether service-oriented human resource practices can enhance customer outcomes through motivational mechanisms (i.e. intrinsic/extrinsic satisfaction) as well as emotional mechanisms (i.e. emotional labor strategies).

This study collected paired data from 220 service workers and their customers at different time points from 80 service firms. Multilevel path-analysis was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.

Our results indicate that firm-level extensive training is positively related to service workers' intrinsic job satisfaction, which in turn increases deep acting. In addition, firm-level incentive compensation is positively associated with service workers' extrinsic job satisfaction, which in turn reduces surface acting. Finally, service employee's deep acting enhances customer loyalty and willingness to recommend via customer satisfaction.

The service organization should (1) stress the importance of incentive compensation to decrease surface acting via enhancing extrinsic job satisfaction and (2) provide extensive service training to improve service employees' intrinsic satisfaction and deep acting, leading to favorable customer outcomes.

The present study identifies the critical roles of motivational and emotional mechanisms in transferring service-oriented human resource practices to customer outcomes and employing rigorous research design to enhance the internal/external validity of our findings.

Grounded in emotional dissonance and social presence theories, this study examines whether the characteristics of employee–customer interaction (frequency, routineness and duration) and emotional intelligence (EI) have an impact on emotional labor (surface acting (SA), deep acting and naturally felt emotions (NFE)) and whether the type of interaction (face to face, voice to voice and online) moderates this relationship.

A survey method was employed to collect data from employees working in hotels, customer care and e-booking services (n = 604). The model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The study showed that EI was positively linked to deep acting and NFE but negatively associated with SA. Frequency of interaction had a negative relationship with deep acting and NFE but a positive association with SA. Duration of interaction (DOI) had a positive relationship with deep acting and NFE but a negative association with NFE. Routineness of interaction had a negative relationship with deep acting and NFE but surprisingly had a negative relationship with SA. Online interaction moderated the relationship between EI and deep acting.

This pioneering study examines the relationship between EI and characteristics of employee–customer interaction with emotional labor in the Indian hospitality context. While the association between EI and emotional labor has been studied, this study is unique in substantiating the moderating effects of interaction type and is among the first to do so empirically.