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An examination of the emotional labor construct and its effects on employee outcomes
Abstract
This dissertation is a quantitative study of the role of emotions in employee workplace outcomes. Specifically, the construct of emotional labor was examined as to its effect on job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). In addition, several purported moderators perceived job autonomy, task variety, trait positive and negative affectivity, gender, organizational commitment, co-worker social support, type of emotional display required positive or negative)) of emotional labor's effect on these outcome variables were analyzed. In an extension of the work of, among others, Morris and Feldman (1996), the study reported herein assessed emotional labor as a multidimensional construct, consisting of frequency of emotional display; intensity of emotional display; duration of emotional display; required variety of expressed emotions; emotional dissonance, and; demands for the expression of positive emotions and/or suppression of negative emodons (i.e., "efference demands"). The participants were 151 employees and their supervisors in 2 divisions of a large private hospital in the Midwestern United States. Employee participants completed questionnaires comprising several scales used to measure all the variables of interest. The supervisor participants completed questionnaires that rated the level of OCB exhibited by their subordinates. Among the major findings in the study, the data suggest that emotional dissonance and efference demands had the strongest effects on the outcome variables. In addition, organizational commitment strongly ameliorated the negative effects of emotional labor on job satisfaction. Of lesser significance were data indicating a tendency for (employee-rated) OCB to be increased when employees were required to express predominantly positive emotions.
Subject Area
Management|Occupational psychology
Recommended Citation
Jones, James R, "An examination of the emotional labor construct and its effects on employee outcomes" (1998). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9903771.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9903771