The impact of emotional labor in a retail environment

Abstract

It is essential for organizations to understand and manage salespeople's emotions. By monitoring the effects of emotions on the job, management can promote and enhance its sales force. However, the literature on salespersons' emotions has been largely overlooked. This paper establishes an integrative emotional labor process model to better understand the emotional component of the sales force in a retail context. Specifically, the paper examines the impact of emotional labor and emotional exhaustion in relation to job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Findings suggest that emotional labor predicts both job satisfaction and organizational commitment, while emotional exhaustion only predicts job satisfaction.

Introduction

Keeping employees satisfied and committed to the organization is a major challenge for retailers. Literature shows that both employee satisfaction and commitment increase performance (e.g., Dabholkar and Abston, 2008, Paulin et al., 2006) and decrease employee turnover intentions (e.g., Pettijohn, Pettijohn, & Taylor, 2007). However, the retail industry is faced with above average turnover rates (U.S. Department of Labor, 2010) and increasing training and administrative costs, which hinder firms from achieving optimal employee performance (Trevor & Nyberg, 2008). While research examines methods to increase employee satisfaction and commitment (Vandenberghe et al., 2007), a stream of research examining the impact of emotion is developing (Ashkanasy, Hartel, & Daus, 2002). The role of emotions in service encounters, however, is still underdeveloped despite the emerging literature (Hennig-Thurau, Groth, Paul, & Gremler, 2006). Given the limited research in the area, organizational behavior scholars call for a broader integrative view of emotions in the workplace (Bono, Foldes, Vinson, & Muros, 2007).

The research stream that addresses the role of emotions in service encounters involves emotional labor (e.g., Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006) and emotional exhaustion (e.g., Boles et al., 1997, Hamwi et al., 2011, Jaramillo et al., 2006). Emotional labor is the act of expressing organizationally desired emotions during service transactions (Morris & Feldman, 1996) and appears in studies of salespeople in a range of different workplace settings (e.g., Varca, 2009). Emotional labor is important in services because front-line employees engage in emotional work as part of their jobs, including greeting customers with a positive attitude. If employees express positive emotions when interacting with customers, the customers are likely to perceive these emotions. Hence, for the benefits of both employees and customers, employees should be able to successfully manage emotions, not inhibiting their emotions nor expressing insincere emotions. However, consensus among researchers has not been reached on either the theoretical or methodological grounds of emotional labor in regard to its construct definition (Glomb & Tews, 2004). To further compound the issue, the amount of empirical research on emotional labor in the workplace remains limited (Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000).

As a state of depletion and fatigue, emotional exhaustion is the primary component of burnout (e.g., Halbesleben & Bowler, 2007). The outcomes of emotional exhaustion can be particularly detrimental in the service industry because employees engage in a high level of interaction with customers, making them more prone to emotional exhaustion (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993). Presently, little consensus on the findings related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment exists (Babakus et al., 1999, Rutherford et al., 2009).

The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of the impact of emotions (emotional labor and emotional exhaustion) on employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment within an Eastern culture. To accomplish the purpose of this study, affective events theory and emotion regulation theory are used as the theoretical foundation. This study also takes place in South Korea, using a sample of retail sales employees to further develop the understanding of the emotional labor process model within the Eastern culture. Fig. 1 provides a graphical view of the examined model.