A SUMMARY REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON EMOTIONAL LABOUR IN THE SERVICE SECTOR
Description
Emotional labour refers to “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display”. (Arlie Hochschild, 1979) Emotional Labour is what happens within the workplace and is a form of emotion management that is required in course of buyer-seller interaction. Several emotion regulation theories clearly show that emotional labour is the outcome of two antecedent i.e. situational factors and individual factors. A thorough research has been carried out on the situational factors, but very few researches have been conducted to analyse how important are the individual factors in the emotion regulation process. The concept of emotional labour will become more clear and defined if the individual characteristics are placed in the emotional framework and its outcome is evaluated and analysed. Individuals behave differently in different situations. Some are more emotional some are less, some are better at regulating their emotions while others find it difficult, some get stressed easily while others are good enough to handle stress. Emotional labour is mostly witnessed in the service industries where the service providers and service receivers come in direct contact with each other for the service delivery process. Service providers deliver their services in both favourable and unfavourable circumstances. Under favourable circumstances emotional labour results in less exhaustion and more job satisfaction. Moreover if a service provider’s personality or traits fit the job requirements, it can be assumed that he/she will experience more “emotional harmony” than “emotional exhaustion”. If there is lack of fit between a service provider’s personality and job requirements, then he/she will probably experience more negative consequences of emotional labour that will result in emotional exhaustion, stress and job dissatisfaction. Researchers have conducted thorough research on EL on different service sectors like airline, bank, police force, front office jobs and to a little extent on nurses and doctors of mental patients. A research on healthcare professionals comprising of the doctors, nurses and administrative unit, as a whole has not been conducted so far. A study on the same has become quite essential in present social structure.