The Effect of Emotional Labor on Work Outcomes

Hochschild (1983), in his book called The Managed Heart, has conceptualized the behaviors and actions that represent the frontline of the employees to the customer as “emotional labor”. He has defined the emotional labor as “employees’ management of their emotions and their labor during this management in order to give good services to their customers” (Hochschild, 1983). The most important assumption about emotional labor derived from the studies conducted up to date is that organizations bring certain standards to their employees’ behaviors by developing emotional display rules in order to help them in reflecting their emotions to their customers in an appropriate manner (Gosserand, 2003). These standards that have been developed over time have created the necessity of reflecting the emotions that workers do not feel in order to present a good service to the customers. It has been understood that this obligation affected the relationship of the employees with the organization. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of employees’ perception of the emotional display rules on the emotional labor, , and the effect of emotional labor on job involvement and turnover intentions