Toward Understanding Emotional Management at Work: A Quantitative Review of Emotional Labor Research

Abstract

A customer service representative who loses his or her temper with a customer would be considered “unprofessional;” as would a funeral director who is perky and bubbly with grieving clients. Behavior in organizations is profoundly influenced by organizational norms and rules. Emotional behavior is no exception. Organizational rules and norms for emotional behavior are communicated to employees through both formal means, such as selection, training, evaluation, and incentive systems, and informal means, such as social influence and pressures. Many organizations encourage employees to exhibit only a narrow range of emotions while at work, such as expressing only cheerfulness when interacting with customers, or suppressing their irritation with a diffi-cult coworker in the name of professionalism. However, as human beings, we can experience a wide range of emotions in a given workday. In order to comply with organizational requirements, many employees must suppress their true emotions or manipulate their emotional expressions. Employees experiencing discordance between felt and required emotions can suppress their genuine emotion, pretend to feel the required emotion (surface acting), or change their emotions to match their organization’s display rules (deep acting; Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Brotheridge & Lee, 2002; Grandey, 2000). This emotional regulation at work was termed emotional labor by Hochschild (1983). In the 20 years since Hochschild’s (1983) study, emotional labor researchers have focused their energy and attention on further defining the emotional labor construct, exploring possible operationalizations of emotional labor, and identifying possible antecedents and outcomes of emotional labor.

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