EMOTIONAL LABOR AND JOB SATISFACTION: DOES SOCIAL SUPPORT MATTER?

What is it about?

For the purpose of withstanding the fierce competition in the service industry, more especially in the banking sector, various banks require employees to display good and positive emotions whenever dealing with customers. However, these emotions come with their own consequences. The question is could social supports provided by these banks serve as a way to mitigate the negative outcomes of such behaviors and increase employee job satisfaction? This paper, therefore, examined the moderating role of social support in the effect of emotional labor on employee job satisfaction in the banking sector.

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Why is it important?

The current study extends the conceptual work and laboratory studies on emotional labor by examining the role of social support on emotional in relation to job satisfaction. Although majority of previous studies have identified social support as a moderator on the relationship between emotional and emotional exhaustion (e.g. Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Grandey, 2000; Morris & Feldman, 1996), this study considered social support as a moderator on the effect of emotional labor strategies (surface acting and deep acting) on employee job satisfaction. In short, this study has highlighted the importance of employees’ perceptions about their social support in determining their reactions to the strain of emotional labor.

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