In most economic societies, as service work plays a important role(Zapf & Holz, 2006) and many researchers have focused on emotional labor(Grandey, 2000). The core aspect of emotional labor is emotional regulation behavior to resolve emotional dissona...
In most economic societies, as service work plays a important role(Zapf & Holz, 2006) and many researchers have focused on emotional labor(Grandey, 2000). The core aspect of emotional labor is emotional regulation behavior to resolve emotional dissonance between emotional display rules that the organizations require and employee's felt emotion(James, 1989).
There are deep acting that focus on the antecedents that make emotional dissonance and try to change internal emotion state, and surface acting that focus on customer's response only and try to change expressions that we can see. In this study, I tested why employees select one of deep and suface acting that have different mechanism. In addition I tried to find the moderator of relationship between actecedents of emotional regulation behavior and emotional regulation behavior. employee's behavior depends on the interaction of circumstances and employee's personal trait(Lewin, 1938) and personal trait depends on the emotional factor and cognitive factor(Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). In this study, I tested attribution about emotional dissonance and positive mood as antecedents of emotional regulation behavior and perceived fairness of display rule as a moderator. That is, attribution about emotional dissonance and positive mood affect to employee to select deep or surface acting and perceived fairness of display rule moderates these relationships.
Because emotional labor has a mechanism using emotion that change within individual everyday, I used experience sampling method to free our research from reliance on respondents'(possibly biased) recall and to resolve the problem that one time sampling has.
Additionally, I analyzed this model by using hierarchical linear model that can explain the difference between within-individual level (attribution about emotional dissonance, positive mood, and emotional regulation behavior)and between-individual level(display rule fairness perception).
This study is examined by using datafrom 39 employees of domestic financing service. The respondents are surveyed twice a day for 7days. The results show that attribution about emotional dissonance has an impact on emotional regulation behavior. Employees who attribute to internal reasons show deep acting and employees who attribute to external reasons show surface acting. Secondly, positive mood has an impact on emotional regulation behavior. Individuals who have positive mood show deep acting less than who don't have. Thirdly, perceived fairness of display rule moderates relationship between attribution and emotional regulation behavior. If employees think their rules are unfair, they do deep acting less and surface acting more regardless of attribution. At last, perceived fairness of display rule moderates relationship between positive mood and emotional regulation behavior. If employees feel their rules are fair, they do deep acting more regardless of mood.
These results have several theoretical and practical implications. As contributions to theory, I found new antecedents of emotional regulation behavior and a moderating variable. And I used experience sampling method to adequately measure the factors that are changed within the employee everyday. As contributions to practice, by educating employees to tend to attribute to internal reason and by making display rule fair, practioner of organizations can facilitate employee to select deep acting.
This study also suggests the limitation and several directions for future research. At first, because I collected data from respondents who provide with service by telephone in the financing service company only, samples have a problem of generalization. So there is possibility to study another service industry and face to face employee. And because I depended on the questionnaire response method, samples have a common method bias. So I suggest that future research can restudy this research model by qualitative research or experimental study. Finally, the future research can test consequences of emotional regulation behavior and their effects on organization.
Emotional labor surely has negative effects on employee but it plays a very important role to increase productivities of organizations. Therefore, we can find how to reduce these negative effects of emotional labor and to increase productivities by studying mechanism of emotional regulation behavior deeply.