Managing emotional labour: the importance of organisational support for managing police officers in England and Italy

Abstract

This paper empirically examines the impact of organisational psychological support on employees’ outcomes as an example of the ‘Common Good HRM’ model on the well-being – performance continuum of police officers, using a Conservation of Resources (COR) theoretical framework. The study uses Structural Equation Modelling to analyse data from 220 Italian police and 228 English police officers to compare the impact of Perceived Organisational Support (POS) on organisational stress, employees’ resilience, and engagement. The findings show that low Perceived Organisational Support (POS) leads to high stress, which then comprises employees’ resilience and likely demotivates them from being engaged on the job, explaining approximately half of their engagement. Stress and resilience also mediate the relationship between POS and engagement. COR theory explains that when POS is low, employees perceive a resource loss spiral which compromises their wellbeing, and consequently, police officers’ engagement is low. The contribution of this paper is that it shows how organisational support is an integral part of managing emotional labour and therefore demonstrates how the ‘Common Good HRM’ model has the potential to protect emotional labour more effectively.