Happy to Serve: Examining the Antecedents and Consequences of the Expression of Naturally Felt Emotions Among Service Workers

Emotional labour (EL), the display of appropriate emotions in accordance with organisational display rules, is an important aspect of most service jobs. This is because services rendered are usually intangible, making the behaviour of the service agent the main determinant of service quality. Extant research on emotional labour has mainly focused on examining the antecedents and consequences of two emotional labour strategies: surface acting and deep acting, overlooking a third type called the expression of naturally felt emotions (ENFE). As such, we know relatively less about how and when service employees genuinely express required emotions at work. This is the case despite studies suggesting that employees can naturally experience and express required emotions without engaging in deep acting or surface acting. In addition, studies demonstrated that ENFE is a more common emotional labour strategy than surface acting and deep acting (Diefendorff et al., 2005; Scott, Lennard, et al., 2020) However, the determinants and outcomes of ENFE have been mostly ignored (Aw et al., 2020). Moreover, performing emotional labour should not be limited to just employee-customer interactions. Indeed, more recent work has acknowledged that emotion regulation occurs within organizations and among organizational members such as coworkers (Zapf, García-Buades, et al., 2020). People in organizations can have various motivations as to why they need to manage their emotions at work, aside from following display rules (Bolton, 2005; Niven, 2016; von Gilsa et al., 2014). Despite this, we have a limited understanding of how and why employees engage in emotion regulation towards members of the organization such as their coworkers.

This thesis aims to address these gaps through a programmatic series of three studies that examine (1) the personal and contextual antecedents of the expression of naturally felt emotions and the mediating mechanisms that facilitate these relationships, (2) how ENFE, deep acting, and surface acting differentially influence well-being, work, and family outcomes and (3) how service employees experience and express their naturally felt emotions towards their colleagues.

The primary purpose of Study 1 is to examine the personal and contextual factors that influence ENFE and the mediating mechanisms that explain these relationships. Drawing from the conservation of resources theory (COR; Hobfoll, 1989) and social identity theory (SIT: Tajafel & Turner, 1985), the study examined emotional intelligence (EI) and perceived organisational support (POS) as antecedents of ENFE. More importantly, the study examined two mediating mechanisms explaining the proposed relationships: occupational self-efficacy (OSE) and organisational identification (OI). To test the study hypotheses, time-lagged data from 286 customer service workers were collected. The results showed that emotional intelligence and perceived organisational support positively predicted ENFE. Moreover, the study found that occupational self-efficacy and organisational identification mediated the proposed relationships and offered unique amounts of variance in predicting ENFE when tested simultaneously.

Study 2 aimed to examine well-being, work, and family consequences of expressing naturally felt emotions along with surface acting and deep acting. Drawing on conservation of resources theory (COR; Hobfoll, 1989), the study examined well-being (psychological well-being and insomnia), work performance ( cooperation), and family performance, as outcomes. Furthermore, the study examined two mediating mechanisms that can explain the proposed relationships: work engagement and felt authenticity. Data from 188 customer service employees were collected to test the hypotheses. Results revealed that the indirect effect of the expression of naturally felt emotions on insomnia, well-being, and family performance is mediated by both work engagement and felt authenticity. However, the indirect effect of the expression of naturally felt emotions on cooperation is only significantly mediated by felt authenticity. In contrast, the negative indirect effect of surface acting on  psychological well-being, family performance and cooperation is mediated by both work engagement and felt authenticity. Further, surface acting is indirectly positively related to insomnia through felt authenticity but not via work engagement. On the other hand, deep acting was found to be positively related to psychological well-being, family performance, and cooperation through work engagement only. Notably, felt authenticity did not significantly mediate the relationship between deep acting and proposed outcomes in the study.

Study 3 aimed to examine emotional labour among coworkers’ interactions. Through 40 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with service workers, this study explored what constitutes the appropriate emotional expression towards coworkers and the consequences of expressing naturally felt emotions in coworkers’ interactions. The study findings illustrated that service workers draw on organisational display rules, societal norms, and professionalism, which collectively determine what constitutes the appropriate display of emotions among coworkers. Also, the study findings revealed the tensions surrounding expressing naturally felt emotions towards coworkers. Furthermore, the findings showed that expressing both positive and negative naturally felt emotions towards coworkers influenced service employees’ performance, relationships, and well-being. Finally, this study illustrated that service employees use ENFE in conjunction with other emotion regulation strategies such as attentional deployment and situation modification to regulate their emotions towards their coworkers.

This thesis makes several contributions. First, this thesis extends the emotional labour literature by examining the antecedents and consequences of expressing naturally felt emotions. Furthermore, the thesis provided evidence regarding the differential effects of the three emotional labour strategies, including the specific mechanisms that can explain such differences. The thesis also highlights the spillover effects of EL strategies in the home domain. Overall, performing emotional labour through the expression of naturally felt emotions is more beneficial than performing emotional labour through surface acting and deep acting. Second, this thesis contributes to our understanding of emotional labour by examining how it is manifested among coworkers. Unlike with customers, service workers express not just positive but also negative emotions towards their coworkers as this helps improve performance and interpersonal relationships at work. The emotion regulation strategies employed by employees when interacting with their coworkers are influenced by organizational display rules, societal norms, and professionalism.