Hotel Service Personnel Study On The Relationship Between The Emotional Labor, Job Stress And Job Performance

Recent studies have proclaimed the effects that emotional labor has on several organizational outcomes, especially in the hospitality industry. The present study investigates the relationship between the emotional labor strategies, surface acting and deep acting, and employees’task performance. Employees in the front-line departments from four five-star hotels completed a questionnaire about their use of emotional labor strategies, as well as indicators of eustress and distress. Their responses were matched with supervisors’rating of task performance.Using SPSS, the data indicate that deep acting is positively related to task performance, while eustress plays a partial mediating role between them. However, surface acting is not always negatively related to task performance. We proposed two ways for employees to exert surface acting, proactive surface acting and reactive surface acting. Results indicate that proactive surface acting is positively related to task performance via eustress; whereas reactive surface acting is negatively related to task performance via distress. At the end of the study, theoreical and practical implications and suggestions for HR Managers in hospitality industry are discussed.