Emotional labour, collectivism and strain: a comparison of Turkish and U.S. service employees

A study on the structural relationship between emotional labor, job burnout, and turnover intention among office workers in Korea: the moderated mediating effect of leader-member exchange

BACKGROUND

This research investigated the interplay of emotional labor, job burnout, and leader-member exchange on turnover intentions among office workers in South Korea.

METHODS

An online survey was conducted with 333 employees working in Korean small- and medium-sized enterprises. The target sample consisted of in-house employees who do not deal with external customers. All the measurement and structural models of this study were analyzed using SPSS 27.0 and Amos 28.0.

RESULTS

The survey revealed that emotional labor indirectly influenced turnover intentions via job burnout and leader-member exchange. Deep acting intensified job burnout, thereby elevating turnover intentions, while surface acting mitigated job burnout.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings underscored the importance of managing emotional labor and job burnout and fostering robust leader-member relationships to reduce staff turnover. Moreover, leader-member exchange was found to mitigate the effects of emotional labor on job burnout and turnover intention, with higher leader-member exchange reducing the negative impact of deep acting on turnover intention through job burnout.

Emotion Work: A Work Psychology Perspective

Emotion work, the management of feelings and emotional displays in response to emotion work requirements, can have both positive and negative effects on well-being and performance. Adopting a work psychology perspective and drawing on work stress and work design literatures, we outline an expanded model of emotion work, regarding emotion work requirements as job characteristics and as part of broader task requirements. The challenge-hindrance stressors framework helps explain positive effects of emotion work in terms of professional role fulfillment. We emphasize the importance of negative events and negative emotions for outcomes of surface acting conditions, and we highlight the often-neglected role of automatic emotion regulation in emotion work. Research on culture suggests that existing results are mostly valid for Western cultures. Practical and research implications refer to a stronger emphasis on conditions at work in general, including stressors and resources, which together determine the meaning of emotion work conditions.

Emotional Labor: Scale Development and Validation in the Chinese Context

Based on the specific cultural context to add greater theoretical precision to emotional labor, we developed the Chinese version scale of emotional labor. For a comprehensive construct development and validation of the new scale, we carried out five studies. First, we used grounded theory methodologies, performed analysis of data from field observations of 15 frontline employees through insider's angle (Study 1) and in-depth interviews with 35 employees (Study 2), and preliminarily glimpsed the main content of emotional labor in China. Second, combined with existing literature and open-ended questionnaires with 110 employees (Study 3), we identified four dimensions labeled as surface acting, deep acting, expression of naturally felt emotions and emotion termination, and established the initial items. Third, Study 4 with 166 service workers from China was performed to demonstrate the validity, reliability, and acceptable psychometric properties of the scale and thus formed the formal scale. Finally, multi-wave data with 403 Chinese samples (Study 5) were collected for validating the formal scale. Future researchers can employ this validated scale to investigate emotional labor in Chinese service settings. We expect the emotional labor phenomena in the Chinese context can add valuable and novel insight into the stock of emotional labor knowledge in numerous geographical and cultural contexts.