The Study of Emotional Labour: Motivational and Multilevel Perspectives

Services are becoming more vital in many countries’ economic development. Indeed, it contributes to GDP growth but also job creation. With the expansion of service economy, emotional labour has emerged as an important research topic that draws constant interest among scholars. The concept of emotional labour was introduced in sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s (1983) groundbreaking book “The Managed Heart” and it is defined as the management of feelings to create an observable emotional display to follow norms. Thereafter, the management literature has focused on examining two components of emotional labour – organizational display rules (Rafaeli & Sutton 1987), which are emotional display expectations and emotion regulation strategies (i.e. surface acting and deep acting), which are used by employees to fulfil emotional display expectations. Though considerable contributions have been made in prior research, some research questions deserve closer attention. In this thesis, I present two disparate studies that address these questions. In Study 1, it investigates the relationship between employee surface acting and firm satisfaction. Specifically, I draw on the expectancy-disconfirmation theory of satisfaction to develop a moderated mediation model in which employee surface acting influences firm satisfaction through its effects on customer perceived surface acting, and this indirect effect is moderated by a change of customer expectations. Results support the moderated mediation model, showing that low importance of positive display rules can alleviate customer perceived surface acting. In addition, low frequency of visit can augment customer perceived surface acting and firm satisfaction. In Study 2, underpinned by the theory of leader-team perceptual distance, it tests the perceptual differences between leaders and teams on team-level display rules and examines how these differences relate to team effectiveness, as indicated by task cohesion and organizational citizenship behaviour. Results suggest that a ...