The Relationships Among Frequency of Encountering Difficult Customers, Perceived Service Training Utility, Emotional Labor, and Emotional Exhaustion ---- The Viewpoint of “Conservation of Resources Theory”
he study explored the relationships among emotional labor, frequency of encountering difficult customers, perceived service training utility, self-monitoring, and emotional exhaustion. Based on the viewpoint of ”conservation of resources theory” (COR), we hypothesized that frequency of encountering difficult customers and perceived service training utility will predict emotional labor, and will furthur predict emotional exhaustion through the mediating process of emotional labor. Besides, self-monitoring (”sensitivity to expressive behavior of others” and ”ability to modify self-presentation”) will moderate the relationship between frequency of encountering difficult customers and emotional exhaustion such that the relationship will be more strongly positive when for employees have lower self-monitoring tendency.
We conducted a questionnaire survey in an international commercial bank in Taiwan and distributed 293 questionnaires to the frontline workers. Two hundred and eighty workers from the bank participated in the study. The return rate was 95.6%. After excluding 2 invalid questionnaires, we had complete data for 278 workers. To develop emotional labor scale, we first collected emotional labor events by critical incident questionnaires and observation. Then, we generated emotional labor items based on 183 events. Finally, we selected 18 items to form the emotional labor scale by factor analysis.
The results showed that: (1) frequency of encountering difficult customers significantly and positively predicted emotional labor; (2)perceived service training utility significantly and negatively predicted emotional labor; (3) emotional labor significantly predicted emotional exhaustion; (4) emotional labor had ”complete mediating effect” on the relationship between frequency of encountering difficult customers and emotional exhaustion, and had ”partial mediating effect” on the relationship between perceived service training utility and emotional exhaustion; (5) ability to modify self-presentation (one part of self-monitoring) moderated the relationship between frequency of encountering difficult customers and emotional labor, but the moderating pattern was not as expected. The ability to modify self-presentation and emotional labor were more strongly positively related for employees with high self-monitoring tendency than for employees with low self-monitoring tendency. The results fit with the prediction of ”conservation of resources theory”. The implications for practices, limitations, and futhur research directions will be discussed in the end.
英文關鍵字
Emotional Labor, Emotional Exhaustion, Self-monitoring, Conservation of Resources Theory
