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The extant research on emotional labor (EL) has focused on positive and negative outcomes observed in the workplace; however, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. The research has yet to consider what factors buffer the negative outcomes of EL. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between workload job demand and employee well-being with mediating effects of surface acting (SA) and moderating effects of emotional intelligence (EI) in service organizations.

The authors used two wave data from a sample of 207 emergency medical technicians to test the hypotheses.

By integrating SA, EI and employee well-being with the conservation of resource theory, the authors found evidence of an indirect effect of workload job demand on emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction via SA. The results of moderated mediation show that the negative relationship between SA and job satisfaction was low when EI was high and the positive relationship between SA and emotional exhaustion was low when EI was high.

A major limitation of the present study is that all the participants were male and drawn from a single profession within the same organization. Another limitation is that the data were collected through self-reports.

This research has important theoretical and practical implications for service organizations wishing to buffer the harmful effects of SA on employees. This study presents key theoretical implications for the EL and well-being literatures. An important practical implication is that EI is a good resource for managing SA’s negative outcomes.

The current study contributes to the extant research by showing that workload job demands have negative effects on employee well-being via SA resulting in reduced job satisfaction and increased emotional exhaustion. Further, the negative outcomes of SA on employee well-being can be buffered through EI by taking EI as an emotional resource. High level of EI helps employees to mitigate the harmful effects of SA.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between surface acting (SA), deep acting (DA) and organizational commitment (OC).

Guided by affective events theory, the study adapted emotional labour scale and three components model to profile 373 teachers from 30 schools around Peninsular Malaysia. A list-based simple random sampling technique was used to select respondents. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test hypotheses, and the proposed model was assessed through renowned fit indices.

OC was hypothesized as a second-order construct. SEM result indicates that both SA and DA have significant negative relationship with OC. Fit indices of the hypothesized model showed χ²/df ratio (560.069/265) = 2.113, RMSEA (0.055), and CFI (0.936). This result provides empirical support for the data collected.

The study provides new insight on the ongoing debate about SA and DA. Therefore, it advances body of research in this regard. The implication for HR managers is that strategic polices can be institutionalized to buffer the consequences of SA and DA. This is due to the fact that SA and DA may not be abolished for service employees like teachers. The practical implication for teachers is the understanding that emotional regulation process is inevitable because teaching is profoundly an emotional activity job. Besides being a cross-sectional study, the sampled population may have limited the study’s outcomes.

Given existing inconsistent results on the consequences of SA and DA, this study shows that not only SA can lead to negative after-effects, DA can also cause the same. Future study can explore spiritual intelligence to examine how best SA and DA can be performed at reduced consequences on OC.

Because of the nature of their work, frontline service employees are highly exposed to customer incivility (CI) and are required to perform surface acting (SA) in such circumstances. Both CI and SA have detrimental impact to a sustainable workforce. This study aims to investigate the psychological effects of CI and SA on emotional exhaustion (EE), organizational commitment (OC) and work–family conflict (WFC).

Data from 203 respondents who successfully completed the questionnaire is used for the analysis. Structural equation modelling and bootstrapping were performed to investigate the relationship among variables.

The study found that both CI and SA are positively related to EE. EE is negatively related to OC and positively related to WFC. EE was engaged as a mediator between CI and OC, and between CI and WFC. EE also served as a mediator between SA and OC, and between SA and WFC.

The findings advanced our knowledge of the impact of CI and SA on EE, OC and WFC. Based on the findings, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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.

The study aims to closely look at the phenomenon of transformational leadership and the psychological capital of followers by using affective process theory (APT). It has empirically tested the mediation of the perceived emotional labor (EL) of a leader and susceptible emotional contagion (EC) of followers when studying the effect of transformational leadership on the psychological capital (PsyCap) of followers.

The method adopted was mixed methodology. The data were collected from the 120 respondents and their perception regarding the construct as identified by previous literature was captured through a structured questionnaire. The relationships and hypotheses were tested by the structural equation modeling (SEM) model using SMART PLS. Further 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted using a qualitative approach.

The current research has empirically shown how specific aspects of transformational leadership, i.e. individual consideration perceived by followers also show high use of perceived deep acting strategy. Deep acting EL strategy is impacting positive EC and positive EC is leading to higher PsyCap of followers generating more work efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Mediation of positive EC between Deep acting EL and PsyCap was also observed. In qualitative studies done with the participants, major themes that emerged were transformational leadership, EL strategies, EC and PsyCap.

In times of uncertainty and stress after the post-COVID scenario, employees are facing emotional burnout due to increased work pressure and workload. Transformational leadership has become very critical to manage the PsyCap of followers by using correct EL strategies. Leaders can focus on the optimism and resilience aspect of PsyCap.

The current research has taken affective process theory (APT) as a foundation to understand the connection between transformational leadership and the PsyCap of followers. The study has specifically picked up the fourth mechanism of affective linkage as suggested by Elfenbein (2014) called emotional recognition and seen how emotions are transferred from source (leaders) to recipient (followers). The research has contributed by empirically testing the mediation of the perceived EL of leaders and the susceptible EC of followers and how they affect the PsyCap of followers.

This study aims to examine the concepts of trait emotional intelligence (EI), emotional labour strategies and burnout among internal human resources (HR) service providers. It proposes a model to deepen our understanding of the processes explaining the protective effects of trait EI on employee burnout.

The present study comprises a sample of 143 HR professionals from a large Malaysian financial institution.

Results suggest that trait EI predicted personal- and work-related burnout but not client-related burnout. Trait EI was also found to be partly related to emotional labour (EL), exhibiting a negative relationship with surface acting but not with deep acting. While surface acting exhibited a significant relationship on all three forms of burnout, deep acting was only significantly related to client burnout. Moreover, mediation analyses revealed that surface acting partly mediated the relationship between EI and burnout.

This study examines the relationship between EI, EL and burnout in HR professionals. This study is the first in the literature to examine these relationships in the context of internal service providers and in a non-Western context. Our study enhances our understanding of the processes explaining the protective effects of trait EI on employee burnout in a non-Western context.

This paper aims to discuss the effect of frontline employees' emotional labor (surface acting vs. deep acting) on customer satisfaction and the moderating role of responsibility attributions in the situation of robot service failure.

The scenario-based experimental method was designed to perform hypothesis testing and SPSS was used to analyze the data from the 363 questionnaires collected.

The results indicate that (1) employees' emotional labor recovery has a double-edged sword effect. Deep acting improves customer satisfaction, while surface acting undermines the effectiveness of service recovery and leaves customer satisfaction below previous levels. (2) Customers' responsibility attributions for service failure moderate the effect of service recovery.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the role of frontline employees' emotional labor in robot service failure contexts, which not only enriches and expands the relevant literature in this domain, but also deepens the understanding of how emotional labor and responsibility attribution effect the customer satisfaction.

Drawing on cultural intelligence and social exchange theories, this study examines cultural intelligence and its effects on proactive service performance and the mediating role of leader's collaborative nature and the moderating role of cultural training and emotional labor, particularly deep acting and surface acting, in the relationship between cultural intelligence and proactive service performance.

The study sample comprised 510 healthcare practitioners. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the hypotheses.

The results show that cultural intelligence positively influences proactive service performance. Additionally, leadership's collaborative nature influences proactive service performance. The moderating effect of cultural training and deep acting positively influences the relationship between cultural intelligence and proactive service performance. In contrast, surface acting reveals a reverse effect, thus exhibiting a positive effect on this relationship.

These findings suggest that public healthcare organizations should pay more attention in improving deep acting, cultural training and leadership's collaborative nature for optimal service performance.

The novelty of this study lies in its presentation of an integrated framework based on cultural intelligence and social exchange theories that can solve the contemporary challenges facing healthcare firms operating in emerging markets in integrating cultural intelligence and service performance.

Service research has highlighted the role of emotional labor in service delivery but has neglected service employees’ actions. This study aims to distinguish between the recurrent in-role and extra-role actions of service employees and to examine the joint effect of service employees’ actions and their emotional labor, which may color these actions on customer buying behavior (number of purchased items and total bill).

Phase I comprised two studies: Study 1 examined 70 service interaction videos to identify employees’ service actions, and Study 2 quantitatively validated the most frequent employee actions, used for further study, by examining 40 employee–customer interactions in fashion stores. For Phase II, Study 3 derived data from 60 service employees’ diaries to predict the joint effect of performed emotional labor and service actions on customer buying behavior.

Findings revealed that emotional labor moderated the relationship between service actions and customer buying behavior. The relationship between in-role/extra-role actions and buying behavior was stronger in the lower surface-acting (less emotional faking) condition, whereas the relationship between in-role/extra-role actions and buying behavior was stronger for the higher deep-acting (more emotionally authentic) condition.

Service organizations should not limit training to the more easily attained service actions. This possibility may be lacking if it ignores the emotional component that accompanied the action. This may shift the focus from customer satisfaction to customer delight.

This study is a pioneering effort to examine the specific circumstances in which service employees’ actions (regardless of in-role or extra-role status) will not produce the desired customer-related outcome in the presence of emotional labor.

Psychological constructs like emotional labor, emotional intelligence etc. are gaining importance now to understand employee outcomes such as job satisfaction in a health care setting. The study aims to investigate the relationship between Surface Acting (SA) an emotional labor strategy, and Job satisfaction, and the moderating effect of Emotional intelligence (EI) among practicing nurses.

The authors collected data through self-reporting questionnaires administered to a sample of 141 nurses working in multi-specialty hospitals in a prominent city in India and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

A negative relationship was found between surface acting and job satisfaction but was found positive when EI was introduced as a moderator.

The respondent population was females only and diversity in terms of gender was not obtained.

The study finds significant practical and theoretical contributions to the primary caregivers in a health care setting. It helps to understand the interplay of emotions in this job and use EI as an internal resource to mitigate the harmful effects of continued SA emotional labor strategy to job satisfaction.

It gains a better understanding of the emotion-related parameters in the nursing profession and gives inputs to the community. It throws light on how internal resources can be used for better job satisfaction which in turn leads to better quality care in the health care industry.

Extant literature has been discussing SA as a negative strategy for positive employee outcomes, but the present study gives insights on how this can be mitigated by using EI as a resource.