۱- Introduction

۲- Literature review and hypotheses

۳- Methodology

۴- Reliability and validity analyses

۵- Conclusion, implication and limitations

References

Abstract

The study aims to apply a dualistic model of passion to explore how frontline employees with different types of passion for work use emotional labor strategies, and how this affects emotional exhaustion. The research surveyed samples of 260 in the restaurant industry and employed Structural Equation Model for analysis and testing. The results show that harmoniously passionate frontline employees tend to adopt a deep acting strategy when confronted with emotional labor, and then protect themselves from emotional exhaustion, whereas frontline employees with obsessive passion tend to employ a surface acting strategy, and are in turn more likely to exhausting their emotional energy. Further, finding of mediation analysis confirms the partially mediating role of emotional labor strategies in the relationship between dualistic passion for work and emotional exhaustion. Finally, this study proposes managerial implications and suggestions for future research.

Introduction

Frontline employees in service industries, especially the tourism and hospitality sector, act as the contact point between customers and the organization, and are frequently viewed as the source of service differentiation or competitive advantage for companies (Tsaur and Tang, 2013). Frontline employees need to perform not only intellectual and physical labor, but also emotional labor (EL). In the context of EL, Grandey (2000) points out emotional labor as “the process of regulating both feelings and expressions for organizational goals’. The employees have to make sincere efforts to experience and display the appropriate emotions (i.e., deep acting) (Hwa, 2012) and adhered to the organization’s emotional display rules (Johnson and Spector, 2007; Zapf and Holz, 2006). Frontline employees are expected to be polite, warm and friendly to internal and external stakeholders, and not express anger and frustration (Smollan, 2006). In this process, EL becomes a source of job stress (Hochschild, 1983). Frontline employees need to constantly regulate their emotions and interact with customers, and therefore experience a higher level of emotional exhaustion (EE) than other employees (Kim et al., 2012). EE is a state of physical or mental depletion, which is often accompanied by a high turnover rate, poor employee performance and low organizational effectiveness. Therefore, hospitality researchers are paying increasing attention to the potential antecedents of EE (Li et al., 2017). In an EL context, employees are expected to display “appropriate’’ emotions and suppress “inappropriate’’ ones to attain specific goals of the organization, and therefore adopt EL strategies (Brotheridge and Lee, 2002). Previous research has identified two distinct acting strategies that frontline employees typically use to meet the requirements for emotional expressions. These strategies are surface acting (SA) (i.e. faking the expected emotions) and deep acting (DA) (i.e. actually experiencing the desired emotions) (Hochschild, 1983). Researchers have found that SA is more likely than DA to associate with EE (Li et al., 2017), while DA may bring numerous positive effects (Pugh et al., 2011). However, the factors determining whether employees respond by faking emotions, or with deeper-level regulation, need further investigation. Allen et al. (2010) recommend considering individual differences in motivational tendencies among frontline employees when examining antecedents of the use of EL strategies.