Despite its strong theoretical relevance with emotional labor, employees’ ability to understand and regulate emotions (i.e., emotional intelligence, EI) has seldom been studied, especially how it affects hotel employees responding to the firm's display rules (i.e., emotional labor) and experiencing burnout and job satisfaction. Thus, this study investigated direct and indirect effects of employees’ EI on two different forms of emotional labor (i.e., emotional effort: EE; emotional dissonance: ED): burnout and job satisfaction. Data were collected from 309 customer-contact hotel employees and managers in the United States. Results of structural equation modeling showed that EI had a direct, positive effect on EE and personal accomplishment and a direct, negative effect on ED and depersonalization. EI was also found to indirectly affect job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion through the mediating roles of personal accomplishment and ED, respectively. Additionally, ED was found to directly affect depersonalization and indirectly affect job satisfaction through emotional exhaustion while EE directly affects personal accomplishment and indirectly affects job satisfaction through personal accomplishment. Finally, personal accomplishment was found to mediate the depersonalization–job satisfaction relationship. Managerial implications for human resource practices are provided.
The quality of the interpersonal interaction between customers and service employees is critical in satisfying customers, ultimately influencing the bottom line of the company (Ashkanasy et al., 2002 and Bitner, 1990). Positive attitudes and emotions in service employees during service encounters can create a favorable impression on customers. They are then more likely to purchase a product, do return business with the company, and speak well of the company (Parasuraman et al., 1985).
Because of this, most companies in today's highly competitive business environment have begun to focus heavily on managing their employees’ emotional behavior (Diefendorff and Richard, 2003), prescribing implicit and explicit display rules for the appropriate emotional expressions that their employees should use during customer encounters (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993). In hospitality, employees perform two types of emotional labor; some employees may choose outward displays consistent with display rules but hide or mask felt emotions. In contrast, others may attempt to modify internal feelings about display rules or customer contact situations (Hochschild, 1983).
Employees who repeatedly suppress their true emotions or fake them to follow the display rules suffer a continuing discrepancy between inner feelings and outward expressions (Grandey, 2000). This emotional discrepancy leads to emotional discomfort and job stress that in turn causes burnout and job dissatisfaction (Zapf, 2002). On the other hand, when employees make an effort to feel the required emotions, they feel emotional congruence between true feelings and emotional display, increasing their personal accomplishment and job satisfaction (Adelmann, 1995).
The ability of an individual to recognize his/her own feelings and those of others and to motivate and manage his/her own emotions well in relationship with others (i.e., emotional intelligence – EI) is critical in performing emotional labor (Goleman, 2000). Research has shown that EI can influence how people control their emotions and handle frustration. Emotionally intelligent people are sensitive and empathetic to the feeling and emotion of others (Cheung and Tang, 2009). The positive attributes of EI may change employees’ emotional labor behaviors and, thus, may contribute to reducing burnout and increasing job satisfaction.
Recently, during the global economic downturn, customers have become value-seekers, and service providers strive to provide quality service at reduced cost. Accordingly, the concept of emotions at work has attracted the interest of researchers and practitioners alike (Cartwright and Pappas, 2007). However, research has focused more on showing direct associations of emotional labor with antecedents such as personal/job characteristics or consequences such as job related attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Abraham, 1999, Bakker and Heuven, 2006, Brotheridge and Lee, 2002, Brotheridge and Lee, 2003, Chau et al., 2009, Côté and Morgan, 2002, Diefendorff et al., 2005, Kim, 2008 and Zhang and Zhu, 2008). Little empirical research has been devoted to an integrated view, examining antecedents of emotional labor that may further influence the outcomes of emotional labor (Allen et al., 2010, Austin et al., 2008 and Giardini and Frese, 2006). Therefore, this study investigated the antecedent role of employees’ EI on the links between emotional labor, burnout, and job satisfaction. Specifically, this study examined how employees’ EI directly influences emotional effort (EE) and emotional dissonance (ED) and indirectly affects the three burnout dimensions and job satisfaction through emotional labor in the hotel setting.
In the hospitality industry, where face-to-face and voice-to-voice interactions between service providers and customers continually occur, employees are particularly vulnerable to the demands of emotional labor (Pizam, 2004). However, although current hotel human resources managers are aware of the concept of emotional labor, not many hotel organizations effectively implement strategies to control emotional labor and prevent burnout (Johanson and Woods, 2008). Thus, a deeper and clearer understanding of the EI-emotional labor process and its positive or negative consequences for employees is critical in attempting to create strategies for controlling emotional labor and its outcomes (Johnson and Spector, 2007). Thus, the comprehensive view of the interactions among EI, emotional labor, burnout, and job satisfaction in this study will provide hospitality practitioners and researchers with insights into the process of EI and how emotional labor affects hospitality employees’ job attitudes and behaviors. With these insights, they may also develop and implement effective employee support programs and policies associated with EI, emotional labor, burnout, and job satisfaction.
Despite the volume of literature on EI and emotional labor, very little research has integrated EI and its impact on emotional labor and the major outcomes of emotional labor such as burnout and job satisfaction (e.g., Allen et al., 2010, Austin et al., 2008, Bakker and Heuven, 2006, Brackett et al., 2010, Cheung and Tang, 2009 and Giardini and Frese, 2006). By filling this gap, this study provides a valuable contribution to the literature on emotions in the hospitality workplace.
First, this study considered outcomes of emotional labor (i.e., burnout and job satisfaction), as well as emotional labor, to more comprehensively and integratively evaluate the impact of EI. This allowed us to empirically examine the different effects that EI has on the two dimensions of emotional labor, job satisfaction, and three burnout dimensions in a hotel setting. Thus, the present study builds an extensive and integrative EI-emotional labor-burnout/job satisfaction path model, clarifying the beneficial role of EI.
Second, our findings showed that these two different and complicated forms of emotional labor have bi-directional effects on burnout and job satisfaction. This finding is in line with the Job Demands Resources (JD-R) model that posits high job demands or negative aspects of work may deplete employees’ physiological and/or psychological resources and lead to burnout, whereas the availability of resources encourages motivation and leads to positive attitudes, behavior, and well-being while reducing the impact of job demands and the associated physiological and psychological strain like burnout (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007 and Demerouti et al., 2001). ED, in emotionally demanding situations where EI is low, leads to feelings of emotional depletion and burnout. On the other hand, high EI in emotionally demanding situations increases engagement in EE, which is, in turn, positively associated with job satisfaction. Concurrently, high EI also reduces burnout by decreasing emotional demands and dissonance. Given that the JD-R model was only recently introduced to the academic community as part of an emerging research trend called positive psychology (a branch of psychology that emphasizes human strengths and optimal functioning; Bakker and Demerouti, 2007, Luthans, 2002 and Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), our conceptual model provides empirical evidence of positive organizational behavior concepts and positive emotions.
Third, this study adopted Maslach and Jackson's (1981) multidimensional conceptualization of burnout and thus included the three dimensions of burnout as separate but interrelated constructs. Our results show that the burnout process involves emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of accomplishment occurring in sequence, as postulated in Maslach and Jackson's model, and therefore our results clearly support the generalizability of Maslach and Jackson's model to the hotel setting.
Fourth, examining the individual effects of EI and emotional labor on separate burnout dimensions produced interesting results on the predictors of the dimensions, which has further theoretical implications. According to conventional burnout research (e.g., Maslach and Jackson, 1981, Maslach and Jackson, 1982 and Maslach and Leiter, 1997), depersonalization occurs as a coping response to emotional exhaustion; emotional exhaustion predicts depersonalization. However, our study suggested that depersonalization may also be triggered by ED even when emotional exhaustion is not present. Additionally, our results showed that personal accomplishment, when affected by EI, EE, and depersonalization, predicts job satisfaction. This result underscores the importance of personal accomplishment in employee job satisfaction. Therefore, this empirical evidence establishes meaningful links for future emotional labor research on burnout and job satisfaction.
