The relationship between emotional labor and burnout in direct sales representatives – a pilot study

Authors

  • Elena-Mădălina Iorga College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS
  • Dan Florin Stănescu College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS
  • Dragoș Iliescu College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS

Keywords:

emotional labor, burnout, COR, emotional dissonance, emotional intelligence, people work, performance

Abstract

Special attention has been paid lately to the emotional component of the job, especially concerning “people work” jobs, such as health care, social services work, teaching or sales. On the other hand, affective outcomes have been linked to burnout. Therefore, the current study seeks to investigate the extent to which emotional labor strategies result in burnout for employees who work in direct sales. The study was conducted using a survey method of 107 bank tellers. The results confirmed the fact that expressing organizationally desired emotions while interacting with customers is emotionally taxing. Significant correlations were found not only concerning the scores for emotional labor strategies and core burnout, but also between the respective subscales. The regression analysis indicated the intensity of emotions being regulated in service encounters as the best predictor for burnout in the case of the sample in discussion. Likewise, in a second model, the variety of emotions required in work settings as part of the work role together with the intensity subscale account for approximately 20% of the variance in burnout. Performance did not show the expected relationship with burnout and emotional labor. These findings represent a basis for new antecedents on the implications of emotional labor in the Romanian workplace.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Elena-Mădălina Iorga, College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS

College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS

Dan Florin Stănescu, College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS

College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS

Dragoș Iliescu, College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS

College of Communication and Public Relations, NSPSAS

References

Abraham, R. (1999). The impact of emotional dissonance on organizational commitment and intention to turnover. Journal of Psychology, 133, 441-455.

Allen, J., Pugh, D., Grandey, A. & Groth, M. (2010) Following Display Rules in Good or Bad Faith? Customer Orientation as a Moderator of the Display Rule-Emotional Labor Relationship. Human Performance, 23(2), 101-115.

Ashforth, B. & Humphrey, R. (1993). Emotional Labor in Service Roles: The Influence of Identity. Academy of Management Review, 18(1), 88-115.

Ashkanasy, N.M., Hartel, C. & Daus, C. (2002). Diversity and emotion: the new frontiers in organizational behavior research. Journal of Management, 28(3), 307-338.

Bakker, A.B. (2009). The crossover of burnout and its relation to partner health. Stress and Health, 25, 343-353.

Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E., & Verbeke, W. (2004). Using the Job Demands-Resources model to predict burnout and performance. Human Resource Management, 43, 83-104.

Bakker, A.B., Heuven, E. (2006). Emotional dissonance, burnout and in-role performance among nurses and police officers. International Journal of Stress Management, 13, 423-440.

Boersma, K. & Lindblom, K. (2009). Stability and change in burnout profiles over time: A prospective study in the working population. Work & Stress, 23, 264-283.

Brotheridge, C. & Grandey, A. (2002). Emotional Labor and Burnout: Comparing Two Perspectives of “People Work”. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 60, 17-39.

Brotheridge, C.M. & Lee, R.T. (2003). Development and validation of the Emotional Labor Scale. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 76(3), 365-379.

Brotheridge, C. M., & Lee, R. T. (1998). On the dimensionality of emotional labour: Development and validation of the Emotional Labour Scale. Paper presented at the First Conference on Emotions in Organizational Life, San Diego.

Bussing, A. & Glaser, J. (2000). Four-stage process model of the core factors of burnout: The role of work stressors and work-related resources. Work and Stress, 14, 329-346.

Côté, S. (2005). A social interaction model of the effects of emotion regulation on work strain. Academy of Management Review, 30, 509-530.

Cordes, C.L., Dougherty, T.W. & Blum, M. (1997). Patterns of burnout among managers and professionals: A comparison of models. Journal of Organizational Behavior,18, 685-701.

De Jonge, J., Le Blanc, P., Peeters, M. & Noordam, H. (2008). Emotional job demands and the role of matching job resources: A cross-sectional survey study among health care workers. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45, 1460-1469.

De Vaus, D. (2002). Analyzing Social Science Data: 50 Key Problems in Data Analysis. London: Sage Publications.

Demerouti, E., & Bakker, A.B. (2008). The Oldenburg Burnout Inventory: A good alternative to measure burnout and engagement. In J. Halbesleben (Ed.), Stress and burnout in health care. Nova Sciences.

Demerouti, E., Verbeke, W. & Bakker, A. (2005). Exploring the relationship between a multidimensional and multifaceted burnout concept and selfrate performance. Journal of Management, 31(2), 186-209.

Diefendorff, J.M., Croyle, M. & Gosserand, R. (2005). The dimensionality and antecedents of emotional labor strategies. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 66, 339-357.

Diefendorff, J.M. & Greguras, G.J. (2009). Contextualizing Emotional Display Rules: Examining the roles of Targets and Discrete Emotions in Shaping Display Rules. Journal of Management, 35, 880-898.

Elfenbein, H.A. (2007). Emotions in organizations. A review in stages. Working Paper Series, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Berkley.

Erickson, R.J., Wharton, A.S. (1997). Inauthenticity and depression: Assessing the consequences of interactive service work. Work and Occupations, 24, 188-213.

Erickson, R.J. & Wharton, A.S. (1993). Managing emotions on the job and at home: Understanding the consequences of multiple emotional roles. Academy of Management Review, 18(3), 457-486.

Glomb, T.M., & Tews, M.J. (2004). Emotional labor: A conceptualization and scale development. Journal of Vocational Psychology, 64, 1-23.

Gorgievsky, M. J. & Hobfoll, S. E. (n.d.). Work can burn us out or fire us up: Conservation of resources in burnout and engagement.

Grandey, A. (2000). Emotion Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualize Emotional Labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5(1), 95-110.

Grandey, A. (2003). When “The Show Must Go On”: Surface Acting and Deep Acting as Determinants of Emotional Exhaustion and Peer-Rated Service Delivery. Academy of Management Journal, 46(1), 86-96.

Grandey, A., Fisk, G. & Steiner, D. (2005). Must “Service with a Smile” Be Stressful? The Moderating Role of Personal control for U.S. and French Employees. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 893-904.

Green, D. E., Walkey, F. H. & Taylor, A. J. W (1991). The three-factor structure of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 6, 453-472.

Gross, J. (1998b). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2, 271-299.

Gross, J., Carstensen, L., Hsu, A., Pasupathi, M., Skorpen, C.G. & Tsai, J. (1997). Emotion and aging: experience, expression and control. Psychology and Aging, 12(4), 590-599.

Grossman, M. & Wood, W. (1993). Sex differences in intensity of emotional experience: A social role interpretation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(5), 1010-1022.

Hall, J.A. & Schmid Mast, M. (2008). Are women always more interpersonally sensitive than men? Impact of goals and contact domain. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 144-155.

Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: Anew attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44, 513-524.

Hobfoll, S.E. (1998). Stress, Culture and Community. The psychology and phylosophy of stress. New York: Plenum.

Hobfoll, S.E. (2002). Social and psychological resources and adaptation. Review of general psychology, 6, 307-324.

Hobfoll, S.E. & Freddy, J. (1993). Conservation of resources: A general stress theory applied to burnout. In W. B. Schaufeli, C. Maslach and T. Marek (Eds.), Professional burnout: Recent developments in theory and practice (pp. 115-133). Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Francis.

Hobfoll, S.E. & Shirom, A. (2001). Conservation of resources theory. In R. Golembiewski (Ed.), Handbook of Organizational Behavior (pp. 57-80). New York: Dekker.

Hochschild, A. R. (1979). Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3), 551-575.

Hochschild, A.R. (2003). The Managed Hearth. Commercialization of Human Feeling (2nd ed.). London: University of California Press.

Holman, D., Chissick, C., Totterdell, P. (2002). The effects of performance monitoring on emotional labor and wellbeing in call centers. Motivation and Emotion, 26, 57-81.

Hseih, C.W. & Guy, M. (2009). Performance Outcomes: The Relationship Between Managing the “Heart” and Managing Client Satisfaction. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 291, 41-57

Hunter, B. & Smith, P. (2007). Emotional labour: just another buzz word? International Journal of Nursing Studies, 44 (6), 859-861.

Johnson, H.A. (2004). The Story behind Service with a Smile: The Effects of Emotional Labor on Job Satisfaction, Emotional Exhaustion, and Affective Well-Being

Jones, R.G. & Best, R.G. (1995). An examination of the impact of emotional work requirements on individual and organization. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the Academy of Management, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Keijsers, G. J., Schaufeli, W. B., Le Blanc, P. M., Zwerts, C., & Miranda, D. R. (1995). Performance and burnout in intensive care units. Work & Stress, 9, 513-527.

Knapp, M.L., & Hall, J.A. (1997). Nonverbal communication in human interaction (4th ed.), Belmont, California: Wadsworth, Thompson Learning.

Kruml, S.M, Geddes, D. (2000). Exploring the dimensions of emotional labor: The heart of Hochschild’s work. Management Communication Quarterly, 14, 8-49.

Lazarus, R.S., Cohen-Charash, Y. (2001). Discrete emotions in organizational life. In R. L. Payne and G. L. Cooper (Eds.), Emotions at work: Theory, research and applications for management (pp. 45-8). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Lee, L.T. & Ashforth, B.E. (1996). A meta-analytic examination of the correlates of the three dimension of job burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 123-133.

Levenson, R.W. (1994b). Emotional control: Variations and consequences. In P. Ekman and R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion (pp. 273-279). New York: Oxford University Press.

Lin, W.B. (2008). Antecedents of employee involvement with the comparative model. Quality and Quantity, 44, 459-482.

Maslach, C. (1978a). Job burn-out: How people cope. Public Welfare, 36, 56-58.

Masclach, C. & Leiter, M. (2008). Early predictors of job burnout and engagement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(3), 498-512.

Maslach, C. & Jackson, S. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Occupational Behavior, 2, 99-113.

Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. & Leiter, M. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review Psychology, 52, 397-422.

Mikolajczak, M., Menil, C., & Luminet, O. (2007). Explaining the protective effect of trait emotional intelligence regarding occupational stress: exploration of emotional labour processes. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 1107-1117.

Miner, A.G., Glomb & T.M., & Hulin, C. (2005). Experience sampling mood and its correlates at work. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78, 171-193.

Morris, A., & Feldman, D. (1996). The Dimensions, Antecedents and Consequences of Emotional Labor. Academy of Management Review, 21(4), 906-1010.

Parker, P. A., & Kulik, J. A. (1995). Burnout, self and supervisor-related job performance, and absenteeism among nurses. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 18, 581-599.

Pugh, D. (2001). Service with a smile: emotional contagion in the workplace. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 5, 1018-1027.

Pugliesi, K. (1999). The Consequences of Emotional Labor: Effects on Work Stress, Job Satisfaction and Well-being. Motivation and Emotion, 23(2), 125-154.

Rafaeli, A., Semmer, N. & Tschan, F. (n.d.). Emotion in Work Settings. Oxford Companion to the Affective Sciences, Oxford University Press.

Rafaeli, A. & Sutton, R. (1987). Expression of Emotion as Part of the Work Role. Academy of Management Review, 12, 1, 23-37

Richards, J.M. & Gross, J.J. (2000). Emotion regulation and memory: The cognitive cots f keeping one’s cool. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 410-424.

Shirom, A. (2003). Burnout in work organizations. In C. L. Cooper and I. Robertson (Eds.), International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (pp. 25-48). New York: Whiley.

Shirom, A. (2009). Epilogue: mapping future research on burnout and health. Stress and Health, 25, 375-380.

Schaufeli, W.B. (2003). Past performance and future perspectives of burnout research. Sotuh African Journal of Industrial Psychology, 29(4), 1-15.

Schaufeli, W.B. & Enzmann, D. (1998). The burnout companion to study and practice: A critical analysis. London: Taylor & Francis.

Schaufeli, W.B. & Taris, T.W. (2005). The conceptualization and measurement of burnout: Common ground and worlds apart. Work and Stress, 19, 256-262.

Shuler, S. & Sypher, S. (2000). Seeking emotional labor: When Managing the Heart Enhances the Work Experience. Management Communication Quarterly, 14(1), 50-89.

Taris, T. W., Le Blanc, P. M., Schaufeli, W. B., & Schreurs, P. J. G. (2005). Are there causal relationships between the dimensions of the Maslach Burnout Inventory? A review and two longitudinal tests. Work & Stress, 19, 241-258.

Tolich, M. (1993). Alienating and liberating emotions at work: Supermarket Clerks’ Performance of Customer Service. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 22, 361-381.

Toppinen-Tanner, S., Kalimo, R. & Mutanen, P. (2002). The process of burnout in white-collar and blue-collar jobs. Eight year prospective study of exhaustion. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 555-570.

Totterdell, P. & Holman, D. (2003). Emotion regulation in customer service roles: Testing a model of emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 8, 55-73.

van Dierendonck, D., Schaufeli, W. & Buunk, B. (2001). Toward a process model of burnout: Results from a secondary analysis. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 10(1), 41-52.

Tsai, W.C. (2001). Determinants and consequences of employee displayed positive emotions. Journal of Management, 27, 497-512.

Zapf, D. (2002). Emotion work and psychological wellbeing. A review of the literature and some conceptual considerations. Human Resources Management Review, 12, 237-268.

Zapf, D., Vogt, C., Seifert, C. & Mertini H., Isic, A. (1999). Emotion work as a source of work stress: The concept and development of an instrument. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 8, 371-400.

Wharton, A.S. (1993). The affective consequences of service work. Work and Occupations, 20, 205-232.

Wright, T.A. & Bonett, D.G. (1997) The role of pleasantness and activation-based wellbeing in performance prediction. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 2, 212-219.

Wright, T. A., & Cropanzano, R. (1998). Emotional exhaustion as a predictor of job performance and voluntary turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 486-493.

Downloads

Published

2019-10-26

How to Cite

Iorga, E.-M., Stănescu, D. F., & Iliescu, D. (2019). The relationship between emotional labor and burnout in direct sales representatives – a pilot study. Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 10(1), 20–38. Retrieved from https://www.hrp-journal.com/index.php/pru/article/view/218

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 1 (2012): Psihologia Resurselor Umane

Section

Research articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal,it also allows for use of the work for non-commercial purposes and if others remix, transform or build upon the works found in this journal they must distribute the contributions under the same licence as the original.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See: The Effect of Open Access).