(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
with the organization can be influenced by the amount of emotional labor required of the
organization’s employees.
Emotional labor is a term used initially by Hochschild (1983) to describe “the management of
feelings to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display [which] is sold for a wage and
therefore has exchange value” (p. 7). This management of emotions requires effort (Hochschild,
1983) because it involves shaping one’s emotions, or the portrayal of emotions, to fit institutional
expectations. However, this management of emotions to meet institutional display rules can be
potentially unpleasant and can, over time, lead to, among other things, lower levels of employee
satisfaction, withdrawal (Grandey, 2000), employee burnout and stress (Hochschild, 1983;
Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002), emotional exhaustion (Grandey, 2000), and employees—
including teaching professionals—leaving their jobs.
Burnout, as defined by Freudenberger (1974), involves feelings of failure and exhaustion
resulting from excessive demands on a person's energy with insufficient reward for the effort.
Maslach (1976) defined burnout as psychological distancing from work. Thus, Grandey (2000)
warns: “If emotional labor is related to burnout, it also may contribute to a host of other
organizational outcomes” (p.104).
Vey (2005) suggests that people frequently experience a wide range of emotions during a given
workday, but limit their expression in the interest of professionalism. However, she feels that
“the stress and strain of emotional labor comes from a mismatch between an employee’s internal
emotions and the emotions he or she must express on the job. The feelings of emotional
dishonesty caused by this difference contribute significantly to employee emotional exhaustion,
physical complaints, job dissatisfaction and ultimately, disengagement” (2005, para. 5).
Emotional labor can involve surface acting as employees suppress their real feelings and,
instead, present emotions on the “surface” that they don’t actually feel, but put on a façade as if
they feel them (Rafaeli, 1989). Emotional labor can include both positive and negative emotions,
and can include more than one emotion, for example, when emotional contrast is used to achieve
social influence (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1991). Maslach (1978) argues that faking certain emotions
may allow individuals to psychologically distance themselves from potentially stressful
encounters.
Grandey (2000) posits that the idea of emotional labor assumes that “emotions are being
managed at work in order to meet the display rules stated by the organization and suggest either
individual or organizational outcomes of emotional labor” (p. 96). Emotional labor thus requires
employees to regulate “both feelings and expressions for the organizational goals” (p. 97) and
includes the ability to empathize with colleagues as well as the public for the benefit of the
organization.
Morris and Feldman (1996) define emotional labor as “the effort, planning and control needed to
express organizationally desired emotion during interpersonal transactions” (p. 987). Within this
definition are four underlying assumptions: (1) “Emotion is at least partly socially constructed.
Consequently, emotional experience and expression can be and often are subject to external
direction, enhancement, and suppression.” (2) Even when employees already feel the emotion
156