Explaining job satisfaction from the effects of customer-related social stressors and psychological capital perspectives

Abstract

This study investigates the emotional labor of airline ground officers and their emotional work induced by customer-related social stressors. Further, the significance of psychological capital on job satisfaction is explored. A few studies have investigated emotional labor in the airline industry, but none of them have looked into the ground officers who often undertake even heavier emotional labor than any other employees in the industry. One hundred self-administered questionnaires were distributed to airline ground officers in South Korea, and a total of 87 samples were analyzed. The results suggest that customer-related social stressors had a positive relation to emotional dissonance. Emotional dissonance was found to be positively associated with the emotional exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion had a negative relation to job satisfaction. Psychological capital affected job satisfaction positively. This paper is expected to contribute to the existing literature in the tourism and hospitality industry in terms of emotional labor, and to help organizations to come up with policies to lessen job stressors among frontline service employees. In particular, measures to reduce or lessen customer-related social stressors, and to bolster or strengthen psychological capital at the organizational level may help both individuals and organizations to better manage dysfunctional customers, to secure loyal customers, and to enhance job satisfaction of ground officers.