The Antecedents of Emotional Labor Among Human Service Workers: Evidence from South Korea

Background: Emotional labor has been identified as one of the core characteristics in the service sector(Ashforth & Humprey, 1993; Morris & Feldman, 1996). In light of this, researchers have been also pointed out that human services are delieved by emotional labor in the human service field (Hasenfeld, 2008; Guy et al., 2008; Mancini & Lawson, 2009). However, little empirical evidence on what factors affect emotional labor among human service workers exists. As such, this present study aims to examine the antecedents of emotional labor among human service workers in South Korea based on the Morris and Feldman(1996)’s model.

Methods: A random sample of 80 human service organizations in a metropolitan city and a province was selected by systematic sampling and human service workers in the 80 organizations were recruited to participate in the online. Finally, 54 organizations and 409 human service workers were completed the online questionnaires. A 10-item measure represented emotional labor, including four subscales of frequency of emotional display, attentiveness to required display rules, variety of expressed emotions and emotional dissonance. Reliabilities of emotional labor’s subscales were confirmed. As the antecedents, explicitness of display rules, feedback, gender, task responsibility, power of role receiver, task variety, serving people in need, job autonomy were included for analysis. Four multiple regression models were examined using STATA 14.0. The analytical model accounted for control variables of educational level and field tenure.

Results: 60.9% of those surveyed were female and the average age for the sample was 32.8 years (SD = 7.0). 68.5% of the participants had a bachelor’s degree and 20.0% has a master’s degree. Four models fit with the data. Being a frontline worker (ß=.236, p<.05), task responsibility (ß=.146, p<.01) task variety (ß=.179, p<.001) was positively associated with frequency of emotional display. Field tenure was negatively associated with frequency of emotional display (ß=.212, p<.01). Task responsibility (ß=.152, p<.01), task variety (ß=.142, p<.01), feedback (ß=.136, p<.05) and education (ß=.116, p<.01) was positively associated with attentiveness to required display rules. Field tenure was negatively associated with variety of expressed emotions (ß=-.199, p<.01). Task responsibility (ß=.177, p<.01), task variety (ß=.122, p<.05), feedback  (ß=-.129, p<.05) and field tenure (ß=-.153, p<.05) were significantly associated with emotional dissonance.

Conclusion and Implications: Findings contributes to understanding of the antecedents of each subdimensions of emotional labor in the human service field. Findings show that frontline workers and workers with shorter tenure are more likely to display their emotions and managers should help them facilitate their emotional labor. Also, task responsibility was found to be a strong factor affecting frequency of emotional display, attentiveness to required display rules and emotional dissonance. Therefore, managers should strive to allot works to human service workers on an acceptable level. Also, the findings recommend that managers should focus more on human service workers doing diverse works to facilitate emotional labor and provide them with more feedback. Future research is needed to examine the research model in the other cultural contexts and the impact of emotional labor on organizational performance.