How emotional labor harms employee’s performance: unleashing the missing links through anxiety, quality of work-life and Islamic work ethic

Abstract

Employing conservation of resources (COR) theory, this research examined how emotional labor influences employees’ job performance by testing a serial mediation moderation model. We propose job anxiety and quality of work-life (QoWL) as explanatory mechanisms in the emotional labor–job performance relationship, and Islamic work ethic as a coping mechanism between job-related anxiety and quality of work-life. To test our proposed hypotheses, the data was collected from 211 service sector supervisor-subordinate dyads in a three waved time-lagged study. Results elaborate that service employees who suffer from resource depletion due to emotional labor and job-related anxiety can still enjoy a better quality of work-life and deliver well at their workplace when they possess a stronger Islamic work ethic.