Search results

Frontline service employees’ (FLEs) positive personality traits enhance service experiences, for both employee and customer outcomes. Yet, limited research addresses negative personality traits. Drawing on the emotion regulation framework, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model in which three negative personality traits – Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism (the so-called dark triad (DT)) – represent antecedents, and FLE emotion regulation strategies (surface and deep acting) are mediators, all of which predict job satisfaction.

The test of this model includes occupationally diverse samples of FLEs from an individualistic (the USA) and a collectivistic (Japan) country, to assess the potential moderating role of culture.

The findings suggest that Machiavellianism relates more positively to surface and deep acting in Japan, whereas psychopathy relates more negatively to surface acting than in the USA. Unexpectedly, narcissism exhibits mixed effects on surface and deep acting in both countries: It relates positively to surface acting in the USA but prompts a negative relationship in Japan. The positive narcissism–deep acting relationship is also stronger for Japanese than for US FLEs. These findings help specify the effects of negative personality traits on important employee outcomes.

This is the first study that relates service employees’ DTs with emotional labor resulting in new avenues for further research. The findings are managerially relevant because they help specify the effects of negative personality traits on important employee outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how two motives for feedback-seeking behavior, the instrumental and image enhancement motives, impact the feedback-seeking process and supervisor ratings of task performance.

Correlational data were collected from supervisor-subordinate dyads and analysed with path analysis.

Results show that perceptions of a supportive supervisory feedback environment are associated with both higher instrumental and image enhancement motives. The instrumental motive fully mediates the relationship between the feedback environment and feedback-seeking behavior. However, the positive effect of feedback-seeking behavior on task performance ratings made by supervisors is only significant when the image enhancement motive is low. Contrary to expectations, no direct or moderating effects were found for the instrumental motive on performance ratings.

These results demonstrate that many instances of feedback-seeking behavior are motivated by a desire to enhance one’s public image, and that high image enhancers can earn strong performance ratings even with low feedback-seeking behavior. Overall, the findings highlight the critical importance of measuring employees’ motives in research on feedback and performance management.

This is the first study to explicitly examine how motives mediate and moderate the relationships between feedback environment perceptions, feedback-seeking behavior, and performance in the workplace. The findings suggest that future research on feedback-seeking behavior should measure and model the effects of motives on feedback processes.

Service firms increasingly hire employees that work two or more jobs. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory and the notion that employees have finite emotional resources, the purpose of this paper is to examine the consequences of emotional labour among employees who simultaneously work in two service jobs. The authors posit that emotional labour requirements from the primary job (PJ) and secondary job (SJ) interact to emotionally exhaust employees through a process of resource depletion. Specifically, building on extant work, this research tests a theoretical mediation model of surface acting predicting organizational commitment through emotional exhaustion.

Employing a predictive survey approach, 171 frontline-service employees with two jobs from a variety of service industries are surveyed in two waves. The hypothesized model is tested using a bootstrap procedure for testing indirect effects. In addition, the authors investigate first- and second-stage moderation.

Results confirm full mediation of the relationship between surface acting and organizational commitment by emotional exhaustion, confirming that the effect of surface acting on organizational commitment is indirect through emotional exhaustion. In addition, results reveal that surface acting in the SJ moderates the link between surface acting in the PJ and emotional exhaustion, and that employees low on organizational identification congruence display lower levels of organizational commitment with the PJ.

This study contributes to the literature that relates emotional labour to organizational commitment by investigating contingent factors. The key contribution thus pertains to identifying contingent factors based in COR theory and social identity theory that influence the triadic relation between surface acting, emotional exhaustion, and organizational commitment.

Results reveal that surface acting in a second job not just simply adds to the level of employee emotional exhaustion. Instead levels of surface acting in a first and second job interact with each other to affect emotional exhaustion. This finding suggests service managers must take into account if and how employees are enforced to perform surface acting in the other job to prevent high exhaustion.

This study is the first to investigate emotional labour among dual job holders, a growing segment of the service workforce that poses unique challenges to organizations.

Action–state orientation (ASO) describes the ability to plan, initiate, and complete intended activities. Action-oriented individuals, compared to state-oriented, are better able to focus their efforts and therefore move toward goals. While Kuhl (1994) posits that affect mediates the relationship between personality traits like ASO and successful self-regulation, ASO scholarship rarely examines the role of affect, and no ASO studies have examined self-regulation over time. We address these limitations by examining students’ academic self-regulation over a semester. HLM analyses show that action- versus state-oriented people exhibit better academic self-regulation as expected. However, we found no support for affect as a mediator.