Emotional Labor in Organizations
Chapter from the book:
Seyhan,
M.
(ed.)
2023.
Studies on Management, Organization, and Strategy.
Synopsis
The human being is highly qualified, with the ability to think and speak, and has free will. The most important features that distinguish humans from other living things are their mental power and emotions. With the increasing importance of information in the competitive business world, the importance given to people and human emotions has increased. Emotions are subjective and abstract expressions that are not uniform, complex, multifaceted, or the same from person to person. In emotional labor, the individual makes different emotional displays to the external environment by masking her own true feelings. The focus of these behaviors is on how individuals display the behaviors expected of them in their working lives and how they adapt to these behaviors. If emotional labor behaviors are felt deeply and sincerely, they increase individual performance and self-efficacy. It is stated that this provides a great advantage in terms of achieving the corporate goals and objectives of the organization and providing financial benefits by increasing customer satisfaction in terms of corporate. However, emotional labor behaviors may cause some undesirable situations for employees, especially in sectors where competition is intense and employee compensation is made in proportion to performance. Employees display their feelings toward the organization in three ways: surface behavior, in-depth behavior, and sincere behavior. It has been seen that the variables that emotional labor is most compared to are stress, job satisfaction, intention to leave, motivation, burnout, alienation, performance, economic benefit, and commitment to the organization. It is important to implement strategies such as determining the causes of emotional labor that lead individuals to superficial behavior in working life, increasing the awareness of employees on this issue, improving emotional labor internal communication and working conditions, paying attention to the balance of justice within the organization, providing social support to employees, and reducing stress factors arising from the working environment.