How Does Emotional Labor Influence Voice Behavior? The Roles of Work Engagement and Perceived Organizational Support

Yuechao Du,Zhongming Wang

doi:10.3390/su131910524

Abstract

Promoting employee voice behavior is important for the sustainable development of organizations. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, the study examined the association between emotional labor and employee voice behavior and the mediation of work engagement in this relationship. Surveys were collected at two time points, four weeks apart, from 629 employees in the service industry in China. The results show that surface acting is negatively related to work engagement and that deep acting is positively related to work engagement. Employees’ work engagement is positively associated with voice behavior. Hence, work engagement appears to be a mediating variable that translates the emotional labor into voice behavior. Moreover, perceived organizational support moderates the relationship between emotional labor and voice behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Highlights

As competition in the service industry intensifies, enterprises have increasingly higher demands for their employees’ work attitudes, behaviors and service quality in order to achieve sustainable development
As shown in the table, surface acting was negatively correlated with work engagement (r = −0.10, p < 0.01) and voice behavior (r = −0.21, p < 0.01), while deep acting was positively related to work engagement (r = 0.25, p < 0.01) and voice behavior (r = 0.35, p < 0.01)
Work engagement is positively correlated with voice behavior (r = 0.42, p < 0.01)

Summary

Introduction

As competition in the service industry intensifies, enterprises have increasingly higher demands for their employees’ work attitudes, behaviors and service quality in order to achieve sustainable development. Enterprises are key actors in the operation and integration of sustainability and, in addressing current and future stakeholder needs and contributing to the achievement of sustainable development for society at large [1]. Service-oriented enterprises pay great attention to how to ensure employees’ emotional labor has a beneficial impact on organizations [2]. Hochschild defined emotional labor as an individual’s display of appropriate facial expressions or body movements to the public by disguising and managing internal and external emotional experiences according to the rules of expression required by the organization [3]. Surface acting refers to the act of changing external display to show emotions without changing inner feelings, which is a kind of pretend emotional display [5]

Methods

Results

Conclusion