EFFECT OF EMOTIONAL LABOR ON WORK OUTCOMES: A COMPARATIVE

STUDY AMONG TEACHERS, DOCTORS AND MARKETING PERSONNELS.

ABSTRACT:
Emotional labor can be defined as the degree of manipulation of ones inner feelings or
outward behavior to display the appropriate emotion in response to display rules or
occupational norms. This study tries to investigate the relationship of emotional labor with
different work outcomes like job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion and work family balance.
The study also tries to investigate the impact of emotional labor on subjective well being of
an individual. For the purpose already established scales were taken and a survey was
conducted among 135 individuals out of which 50 were teachers, 39 doctors and 45
marketing executives.

Keywords- Emotional Labor, job satisfaction, social well being, emotional exhaustion, work
home balance.

Introduction to emotional labor

Emotions are the basis of our social life. They function as filters of perception, affecting our
conscious decisions and, sometimes, even making decisions for us on their own. However, we
often find ourselves in situations in which our spontaneous emotions, or expression thereof,
(would) bring about negative consequences. The range of acceptable emotions varies with
culture, gender, and age.
Emotional labor is a form of emotion regulation that creates a publicly visible facial and
bodily display. While emotion work happens within the private sphere, emotional labor is
emotional management within the workforce that creates a situation in which the emotion
management by workers can be exchanged in the marketplace.
Emotional labour refers to the effort, planning, and control required to display
organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions (Morris and Feldman,
1996, p .987). According to Hochschild (1983) who rst introduced the concept, expectations
exist regarding the appropriate or inappropriate emotional display of employees whose jobs
involve a considerable degree of contact with the public. Emotional labor occurs when an
employee purposefully alters his or her emotions in order to meet an organizational demand.
This indicates that in order to perform emotional labor, the employee must be experiencing,
or must be about to experience, an emotional response that is not congruent with the
organizational demand.
It has been estimated that some degree of emotional labour is present in approximately two-
thirds of workplace communications (Mann, 1999). Nonetheless, it is a fundamental
component of service work where a high degree of emotional control may be required to
maintain positive relations with customers (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002). Although
members of other occupational groups, such as physicians and the police, experience
situations that are emotionally taxing, it has been argued that they possess the authority to tip
the interactional control balance in their favour (Tolich, 1993, p. 366). Customer service
providers are typically subordinate to their consumers; their interactions with members of the
public tend to be routine and scripted, constraining opportunities for personal expression
(Grandey et al., 2004; Grandey and Fisk, 2006). A fundamental goal of service work is to
make interactions with customers warm and friendly and prevent emotional leakage of
boredom or frustration (Leidner, 1999; Putnam and Mumby, 1993; Schneider and Bowen,
1999; Zapf et al., 2003). Customer service providers are frequently required to treat customers
politely even when subjected to abuse (Glomb and Tews, 2004). The manner in which service
sector employees manage their emotional states promotes customer spending and repeat
business (Tsai and Huang, 2002). There is evidence that customers have become more adept
in discerning the difference between genuine emotional display in service providers and
that which is feigned (Taylor, 1998). The quality of employee-customer interactions, and how
to enhance this, is therefore of considerable concern for management. Emotional display rules
may be communicated through company mission statements, staff handbooks, training and
performance appraisals and more implicitly disseminated through organizational socialization
processes (Bolton, 2000; Seymour and Sandiford, 2005; Zapf, 2002). Rules may be enforced
through random monitoring of telephone calls, customer service questionnaires, video
surveillance and mystery customers (Noon and Blyton, 1997; Deery et al., 2002; Rafaeli
and Sutton, 1989). Employees who are deemed to perform poorly are often penalised (Tolich,
1993).
Construct Definitions

Emotional labour : Emotional labour refers to the effort, planning, and control required to
display organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions (Morris and
Feldman, 1996, p .987).

Job Satisfaction: A pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal
of ones job or job experience (Locke, 1976).

Subjective well-being (SWB): It is defined as a persons cognitive and affective evaluations
of his or her life (Diener, Lucas, & Oshi, 2002, p. 63).

Emotional Exhaustion. Feelings of being emotionally overextended and drained by
ones contact with other people (Maslach, 1982).

Work Family Balance: "The extent to which individuals are equally involved in-and equally
satisfied with-their work role and their family role." (Greenhaus & Singh, Collins & Shaw,
2003).

Literature Review

Emotional labour
Hochschilds (1983) original conceptualisation of emotional labour maintains that jobs
involving extensive interpersonal contact with customers or clients necessarily involve
emotional labour. Hochschild considered such jobs to be inherently dehumanising and
distressing, as opportunities for autonomy over emotional expression are constrained. More
recently, however, it is recognised that emotional labour should be conceptualised as a
subjective phenomenon encompassing different dimensions (Mann, 1999; Morris and
Feldman, 1996). Emotional labour is generally considered to include an external component
(employees perceptions of organisational emotional display rules, and the demands made
upon them to comply with these rules) and an internal component (the effort involved in
regulating emotions in order to display emotions that are required by the job role but not
genuinely felt, or to suppress inappropriate emotions that are felt) (Grandey, 2000; Morris and
Feldman, 1996). The presence of emotional display rules may not necessarily have a negative
impact on employees, as there may be congruence between the required emotional display
and the emotions that are actually experienced. Research ndings suggest, however, that
wellbeing will be compromised where the level of dissonance between felt emotions and
those that should be displayed or suppressed require employees to engage in extensive
emotional regulation (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Lewig
and Dollard, 2003; Morris and Feldman, 1996).
Emotional labour and work outcomes
This study examines relationships between aspects of emotional labour and several work
outcomes:
Job satisfaction. Research that has investigated associations between emotional labour and
job satisfaction has yielded mixed ndings. Some studies conclude that employees who
perform more emotional labour typically report lower levels of satisfaction (e.g. Abraham,
1998; Pugliesi, 1999; Ybema and Smulders, 2001; Zapf et al., 1999), whereas others see it as
a source of satisfaction (Adelmann, 1995; Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Morris and
Feldman, 1996; Tolich, 1993; Wharton, 1993). Compliance with organisational display rules
could make interactions with customers more structured and predictable, and help employees
to distance themselves psychologically from emotionally demanding situations. Moreover,
the requirement to be friendly with customers might reduce the monotony of repetitive work
(Tolich, 1993).
Work-family balance. It has been acknowledged that the effort involved in emotional
regulation might have the potential to spill over into other life domains, leading to
perceived conict between work and home roles (Wharton and Erickson, 1995). Work-life
conict is a form of inter-role conict where role pressures associated with membership in
one organisation (e.g. work) are in conict with pressures stemming from membership in
other groups (e.g. family) (Kahn et al., 1964, p. 20). Strain-based work-life conict can
manifest itself as sleeping difculties, exhaustion, irritability, or social withdrawal and has the
potential to impair family life and leisure activities (see Kinman and Jones, 2001).
Despite the clear relevance of emotional labour to the work-home interface where the effort
involved in faking and suppressing true emotions might lead to strain being imported into the
non-work environment, little is yet known about its associations with work/life conict. The
only study that can be located found emotional faking (but not emotional suppression) to be
related to perceptions of work-family interference in a sample of male doctors in Greece
(Montgomery et al., 2005). More research is clearly required that examines relationships
between aspects of emotional labour and the work-home interface in other occupational and
cultural settings.
Emotional Exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is a specific stress-related reaction that refers
to a state of depleted energy caused by the excessive psychological and emotional demands
that occur among individuals who work with people in some capacity (Jackson, Turner, &
Brief, 1987). It describes feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by ones
work, since emotions are not an inexhaustible resource (Frijda, 1994). Emotional exhaustion
is manifested by both physical fatigue and a sense of feeling psychologically and emotionally
drained (Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Wright & Cropanzano, 1998). It is considered the core
characteristic of burnout (Maslach, 1982). Maslach (1982) claimed that emotionally
exhausted individuals are those engaging in emotionally charged situations on a regular basis.
She further indicated that as it is a general belief that service providers alone are responsible
for ensuring the future well-being of their customers and clients, it is also this belief that
constitutes an awesome and exhausting burden to service providers (Maslach, 1982). Her
view was supported by empirical research that has shown that employees who interact with
customers on a frequent and continuous basis (a form of role overload) were found to suffer
higher levels of emotional exhaustion (Maslach, 1982; Saxton, Phillips, & Blakeney, 1991).
Emotional exhaustion is one of the most-often-cited consequences of emotional labor
(Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987; Wharton, 1993; Morris & Feldman, 1996; Jones,
1998; Grandey, 1999; Kruml & Geddes, 2000a). Kruml and Geddes (2000a) suggested that
the degree of exhaustion which workers experience varies according to acting types (Kruml &
Geddes, 2000b). According to Hochschilds (1983) research, employees who cannot separate
their true self and acted self are more vulnerable to emotional exhaustion. They cannot
maintain an emotional distance from their customers. This view corresponds to Maslach
(1982), who found that individuals are most susceptible to emotional exhaustion when they
invest more emotion in the enactment of their helping roles (Maslach, 1982).

Aims of the study
The study utilizes a measure of emotional labour to investigate several issues pertaining to
work outcomes among teachers, doctors and marketing personnels.
The study further tries to investigate the relationship between emotional labour and various
work otcomes and how they are related to each other.
Other than this we are also trying to investigate the impact of gender and occupation on
emotional labour and work outcomes.

Research Methodology
Participants: A total of 134 participants were surveyed out of which there were 50 teachers
(35 males and 15 females) with an average mean age of 29.3 years , 39 doctors (27 males and
12 females) with an average mean age of 32.54 years and 45 marketing personnels ( 23
males and 22 females) with an average mean age of 28.02 years. Overall 200 questionnaires
were distributed out of which 134 were returned representing a response rate of 67%.
Measures:
Emotional labour: This was measured by an amended version of the Emotional Labour
Inventory developed by Mann (1999). Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which
they agreed with each statement on an eight-point scale ranging from 1 strongly disagree to
8 strongly agree. Mean scores across items were computed for each scale, with a high
score denoting a more emotional display rules, more faking and more emotional Suppression.
The cronbach alpha for this 17 item scale was 0.811.

Job satisfaction: This was measured by the 15-item scale developed by Warr et al. (1979).
Respondents are required to indicate on a seven-point response scale the extent to which they
are satised or dissatised with each feature of their jobs. Mean scores across items were
computed, with high scores representing more satisfaction towards the job. The Cronbachs
alpha for the 15 item scale was 0.919.

Subjective wellbeing: This was measured through two scales developed by Diener et el.
(2009).
Flourishing Scale (FS). The Flourishing Scale consists of eight items describing important
aspects of human functioning ranging from positive relationships, to feelings of competence,
to having meaning and purpose in life. Each item of the FS is answered on a 17 scale that
ranges from Strong Disagreement to Strong Agreement. The Cronbachs alpha for this scale
was 0.936.
The Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE). This measure is a brief 12-item
scale, with six items devoted to positive experiences and six items designed to assess negative
experiences. Because the scale includes general positive and negative feelings, it assesses the
full range of positive and negative experiences, including specic feelings that may have
unique labels in particular cultures. Each SPANE item is scored on a scale ranging from 1 to
5, where 1 represents very rarely or never and 5 represents very often or always. The
positive and negative scales are scored separately because of the partial independence or
separability of the two types of feelings. The Chronbachs alpha of Spane-P was 0.857 and
Chronbachs alpha for Spane-N was 0.765.
Work family balance: This measure is a six item scale developed by Grzywacz and Carlson
(2007). Respondents are required to indicate on a seven-point response scale the extent to
which they are satised or dissatised with each feature of their work family balance. The
Chronbach alpha for this scale was 0.874.
Emotional Exhaustion scale: Emotional exhaustion was measured using Maslach and
Jacksons (1981) nine- item emotional exhaustion subscale of the 22-item Maslach Burnout
Inventory (MBI). Emotional exhaustion is measured on a seven-point Likert scale ranging
from (1) = strongly disagree to (7) = strongly agree, A high degree of burnout is reflected
in high scores on the emotional exhaustion subscale. The Chronbachs alpha for the scale was
0.924.