Determinants of Emotion Work

Emotion work is an inherent part of service work, including organizationally-desired emotions regarding customer interactions and psychological strategies of service workers necessary to regulate these emotional demands. Several diverse conceptualizations and perspectives in emotion work research are integrated into a three-part Redefinition Self-Regulation Model of Emotion Work (RS Model) of job demand-strategy-consequences, emulating Hackman’s (1969, 1970) three-part input-strategy-outcome framework for assessing the effects of work tasks. The study attempts to extract from emotion work literature and empirical findings those variables that can be considered antecedents of emotion work job demands and strategies and those variables that can be considered consequences of emotion work job demands and strategies, integrates them in the proposed framework (RS Model), and elaborates upon them with 14 propositions. The first part of the RS Model conceptualizes emotion work demands in a dynamic of organizational determinants defining external tasks (”what one ought to do”); the task redefinition process (”how one perceives this ought–to-do task”) leading from external tasks to internal tasks; and the internal task (”what one thinks one ought to do”) resulting from external task-defining and redefining variables (variables affecting how the task is instructed to employees; and variables affecting how the task is received and perceived by the employees). Propositions regarding external task determinants and predictable effects of these task determinants derived from the RS Model are examined by a field study with police (N = 221), teacher (N = 209) and travel agent samples (N = 202); and by three experiments (Exp. 1: N = 80; Exp. 2: N = 20; Exp. 3 N = 30) with student samples. Results of the field study show that the three highly diverse occupations have predictable differences in emotion work demands. The experiments include the development of anexperimental paradigm to test the proposition that emotional dissonance is an external task. In all three experiments, this experimental paradigm leads to hypothesized consequences of display rule manipulation. Propositions regarding task redefinition determinants were examined in the second part of the field study with police, teacher and travel agents. It is proposed that organizational socialization (how organizations communicate their display rules) as an external task determinant is the pivotal organizational determinant in task redefinition; and that professional identity (self-imposed professional role expectations) as a further redefinition determinant is the pivotal personal determinant in task redefinition. Results of the second part of the field study support the assumption that organizational socialization and professional identity are important variables in understanding emotion work requirements, the emotion work stressor, emotional dissonance, and external-to-internal task redefinition in service work. The Redefinition Self-Regulation Model of Emotion work is a useful framework for integrating the emotion work literature and empirical findings, applying a more general work psychological framework that allows examination of external task effects under the question of how positive effects of emotion work can be reinforced and negative effects of emotion work can be diminished by job design and redesign.