UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------
Tran Thanh Tam
Antecedent and Outcomes of
Emotional Labor: Evidence from
Tourism Industry in Vietnam
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018
UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------
Tran Thanh Tam
Antecedent and Outcomes of
Emotional Labor: Evidence from
Tourism Industry in Vietnam
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
SUPERVISOR: DR. NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG
Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018
Table of Content
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 5
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 6
Literature Review and Hypotheses ..................................................................................... 9
Literature Review ............................................................................................................ 9
Hypotheses..................................................................................................................... 14
Method ............................................................................................................................ 18
Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 23
Sample Characteristics .................................................................................................. 23
Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis ......................................................................... 25
Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis ...................................................................... 26
Results of Discriminant Validity ................................................................................... 27
Results of SEM test ....................................................................................................... 28
Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 30
Conclusion and Managerial Implications .......................................................................... 32
Limitations and Future Research ....................................................................................... 35
References ......................................................................................................................... 37
Appendix 1. SEM model ................................................................................................ 51
Appendix 2. Questionnaire English version ................................................................... 52
Appendix 3. Questionnaire Vietnamese version (Bảng câu hỏi khảo sát) ..................... 59
List of Tables
Table 1 : Measurements .................................................................................................. 21
Table 2 : Sample Characteristics ..................................................................................... 24
Table 3 : Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis ........................................................... 25
Table 4 : Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis ......................................................... 27
Table 5 : Results of Discriminant Validity...................................................................... 28
Table 6 : Results of SEM test .......................................................................................... 28
List of Figures
Figure 1 : Conceptual model............................................................................................. 18
Figure 2 : SEM model ...................................................................................................... 51
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the roles of customer
orientation and emotional labor on job burnout, then job burnout affects job
performance, under a foundation of conservation of resources theory.
Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from a survey of 308
frontline service employees working at travel agencies, restaurants, hotels, airline
ticket agents and museums. Then data were analyzed by means of a confirmatory
factor analysis and structural equation modeling.
Findings – The results indicate that emotional labor strategies affect job
burnout, and in turn job burnout affects job performance. Customer orientation does
not directly affect job burnout, however, it influences emotional labor strategies.
Practical implications – Managers of tourism services companies may develop
a good human resource management system to encourage front-line employees to
enhance their performance related to deep acting when serving customers. This, in
turn, will reduce their job burnout.
Keywords: Customer orientation, Emotional labor, Job burnout, Job
performance
5
Introduction
Nowaday, job burnout is an extremely hot keywork on the internet or in human
resources management. There are many articles on the internet warning about this as
well as researchers doing research on this topic. Job burnout concept is used to explain
the chronic and accumulative job stress of staff at work (Babakus et al., 2009;
Halbesleben, 2006; Sand & Miyazaki, 2000). The consequences of job burnout are
considerably serious, the persons who are exhausted in their work feel emotionally
exhausted, lack of energy, become suspicious, easily react negatively, should be
heartless, or no longer confident in their job (Maslach & Leiter, 2008). Recent
scientific studies have confirmed that employees in service industry, especially
frontline service employees, are subjects to job burnout (Cho, Bonn, Han, & Lee,
2016; Lee, An, & Noh, 2015; Rahim & Cosby, 2016; Wu & Shie, 2017). The intensity
of contact with customers (almost daily), the duty of meeting all requirements related
to customers treatment and the enforcement of making customers happy as a job
evaluation criterion (Yoo & Arnold, 2014). Enterprises in service industry are
interested in this issue, because the problems related to job burnout can directly affect
customers’ satisfaction, employees’ performance results and especially their revenue
and profit (Kim et al., 2017).
In business, especially service industry, customer orientation concept is
considered as a crucial characteristic feature that allows employees to carry out their
duties at their workplace (Babakus et al., 2009; Wu & Shie, 2017); For example:
"Customer is the most important in my job"; "I always try my best to give my
customers the best services". Enterprises take customer orientation into employees’
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duties as a motto to serve customers, as the value of employees’ work, showing their
real concern in providing better services to customers (Brown et al., 2002). Previous
studies related to job burnout, customer orientation and job performance, emotional
labor was usually seen as a mediated factor and was studied in the case of frontline
service employees working in service industry, especially hospitality, restaurant and
airlines (Cho et al., 2016; Hur et al., 2013; Hur et al., 2015; ; Kim et al., 2012; Lee et
al., 2015). Hochschild (1983) defined emotional labor as a process of working by
emotion; employees have to join in many different scenarios to arrange their emotion
display in accordance with enterprises’ expectation. Specifically, the research of Yoo
and Arnold (2014) found that elements of emotional labor (surface acting and deep
acting) were mediated elements influencing the relationship between customer
orientation and emotional exhaustion (an important part of Job burnout). Customer
orientation was seen as an adjusting tool to prevent negative impacts of job burnout to
job performance. It meant that customer orientation could reduce negative influence of
job burnout on job performance of frontline service employees with high customer
orientation (Babakus & Yavas, 2012). In hospitality sector, frontline service
employees with high customer orientation always want to serve customers in a polite
and helpful way; and always ensure of improving customer service quality (Babakus
et al., 2010). However, most of research mention frontline service employees in terms
of enterprises in retailing, restaurant, hotel, and airline agents but there is not any
research mentions frontline service employees in terms of tourism service sector.
Specifically, frontline service employees working for travel companies, restaurants
and hotels serving group of visitors, visit locations and ticket agents.
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Most research on Vietnam tourism service focus on customers. Customers’
attitude, behavior, feeling and satisfaction are always the main purpose or topic in
many surveys and research. Customers are asked about their satisfaction with the
service they received and how to get their satisfaction and loyalty. All resolutions
stand on the customers’ side. For example, the most recent research studied on
customers’ feeling about destination, negative emotion of customers with failure
service (Le & Nguyen, 2017; Le & Nguyen, 2018). Few research studying on the
human resources in case of tourism industry or, if so, are incomplete. Especially, no
research mentions or explains the relationship among job burnout, emotional labor
customer orientation and job performance in tourism service sector. Following the
future trend, service sector of Vietnam in general and tourism services in particular are
on the trend of growing up and will be developed rapidly and strongly in the coming
years (Xuan & Duong, 2017) . According to Lien (2017), tourism services had great
contribution into Vietnam economy, specifically about 6% in 2016 and 7.5% in 2017
of the national GDP; In 2017, Vietnam welcomed over 10 million visitors, not
including domestic sources; And it is expected to have from 13 million to 15 million
guests visiting Vietnam in 2018. However, statistics showed that there are only about
750,000 direct workers and 2.2 million indirect workers working in tourism sector
(Chau, 2017). This is a low figure, the rate of increase in labor of this sector is even
lower than the rate of increase in the number of visitors. This reality leads to tourism
industry staff are usually under tremendous pressure on the workload and the
requirements of satifying customers. The problems of human resources, especially
high-quality human resources that are not sufficiently met the industry need (Chau,
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2017), is a challenge that requires managers to create solutions that inspire the
passion, enthusiasm and commitment to reduce job burnout and retain frontline
service employees while waiting for the persons being trained.
This study aims to investigate the impact of customer orientation on emotional
labor, job burnout, and job performance of frontline service employees in tourism
industry. Through this research, tourism services companies can have realistic
understanding of the human resources, thereby developing a better management
strategy to encourage employees to increase their performance related to Emotional
Labor Strategies to serve customers, motivate them to be loyal to the company,
commit to serve customers well, increase work efficiency and reduce work
exhaustion.
Literature Review and Hypotheses
Literature Review
Conservation of resources (COR) theory
COR theory is based on the basic rule that persons try to minimize the loss of
resources. The main concept of this theory is the loss of resources. Actually, the
persons who have more resources, are more likely to avoid stress than the persons not
having much resources (Alarcon et al., 2011). Persons focus on collecting, maitaining,
fostering and protecting resources to avoid losing valuable resources. In addition, the
resources are value-added elements that can create change and assist in replenishing
lost resources (Alvaro et al., 2010). The first principle of COR theory focuses on the
dynamic force of resource losses versus resource benefits (be motivated by loss). It
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means that the persons who lose their resources, will motivate themselves to improve
the lost resources figures (regain lost ones) or focus on their own weaknesses, and lose
more resources (Woo, 2014). The second principle focuses on resources investing to
protect against loss of resources, restore lost resources and promote the collection of
additional resources to prevent future deficits (Alarcon et al., 2011).
Customer Orientation (CO)
In accordance with the definition of Babakus et al. (2009), customer orientation
is an important personality trait that allows employees to implement their duties at
work. Customer orientation is a psychological resource that creates the desired
working results because customer orientation helps shaping employee perceptions and
attitudes toward their work. Specifically, customer orientation employees can timely
resolve customer requirements and issues, treat customers politely and nicely, and
maintain a consistent level of emotion in their interaction with customers. As
individual level, customer orientation was considered as a personality trait (Brown et
al., 2002), a mixture of attitude and behavious (Stock & Hoyer, 2005). Frontline
service employees with high customer orientation tend to provide good services in a
natural way. They prefer working and believe that providing timely and effective
services to customers is a major function of their work (Wu, Shie, & Gordon, 2017).
Customer orientation at enterprise-level is generalized as an organizational culture, an
active collective process that leads to organizational success (Brockman et al., 2012;
Hanzaee & Mirvaisi, 2011; Wu & Shie, 2017).
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In this study, COR theory is also used as a fundamental theory, explaining the
relationship among factors customer orientation, emotional labor, job burnout, and job
performance. Customer orientation is viewed as a personality trait of frontline service
employees in tourism services.
Emotional Labor (EL)
Emotional labor, which is also known as emotion labor or emotion labour, or
emotional labour, is an important and essential part in service sector (Bu et al., 2015).
Emotional labor has been proved to have an impact on the efficiency of organizations
and individuals (Grandey et al., 2015). Emotional labor is defined as the management
of emotional expression in order to create appropriate visual display of the face and
the body, based on organization desires. There are two different types of emotional
labor action strategy: surface acting (SA) and deep acting (DA) (Hochschild, 1983).
Surface acting refers to the management of external emotional expression without any
change in inner feelings, which is also known as emotional impersonation, while deep
acting relates to an effort to create desired emotional display (Burch et al., 2013). In
the positive case, the employee represents surface acting at the request of organization
to improve organization performance or to please service recipient. For example,
employees smile because they know customers like it, though they do not really feel
happy. In the negative case, their smile is just made to obey their obligation to their
organization. In contrast, deep acting is a process through which employees change
their internal emotions to fit the expectations of organization, the emotions created on
the display are natural and true emotions (Grandey et al., 2013). The fact that internal
emotion is changed, suggesting an external manifest along with the display principles
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(Woo, 2014). Thus, surface acting occurs at the level of expression and deep acting
occurs at the level of experience. In later studies, another emotional labor component
was found, that is genuine acting (GA). The third part of emotional labor is a true
emotion, individuals do not always have to change emotion or emotional expression to
meet the display principles; sometimes they really feel the desired emotion and
naturally express it (McCauley & Gardner, 2016).
Many studies have shown that surface acting is more likely to lead to negative
health outcomes than deep acting (Lee et al., 2015). The contradiction between the
real emotion and the display principles leads to surface action, which is only for the
purpose of implementing the display principles. This leads to emotional inhibition of
employees. To solve this inhibition, frontline service employees are required to use
some resources to regain emotional balance. Thus, surface acting strategy requires the
investing of resources in accordance with the display principles and managing
emotional imbalance (Woo, 2014). According to Wu and Shie (2017), deep acting was
not like surface acting, since the self-resources needed to be invested to follow the
display principles and there is no imbalance need to be managed. A number of
previous studies have shown that deep acting was positively related to job
performance because it gave service staff a sense of accomplishment through
customers positive feedback (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Brotheridge & Lee, 2002;
Tolich, 1993).
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Job Burnout (JB)
Job burnout is a chronic matter related to work, that is progressively developed
as a result of persistent stress in the workplace (Sokka et al., 2016). Job burnout seems
close to stress but not stress. Stress is defined as the reaction of a person to
environmental disturbances, resulting at the physics, psychology or behavior of
member of organization. Job burnout refers to psychological stress of workers because
of chronic and accumulative job stress over a long period of time (Halbesleben, 2006).
The consequences of job burnout include the following: emotional exhaustion,
cynicism and reducing personal achievement (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Lee &
Ashforth, 1996; Maslach, 1982; Maslach & Leiter, 2008). As one of the fundamental
components of work exhaustion, emotional exhaustion refers to "the feeling of being
overwhelmed and exhausting one's emotional and physical resources" (Maslach &
Leiter, 2008, p. 498). Cynicism and reducing personal achievement make employees
lose confidence in their ability to finish work and doubt their contribution or influence
to their organization (Shin, 2003). Monitoring of job burnout symptoms is necessary
for an organization because it does not only affects employee satisfaction and
performance, but can also have a serious effect on customers’ satisfaction (Lee et al.,
2015).
Job Performance
Job performance is considered extremely important in the field of human
resources and organizational behavior; a number of research have focused on the
influence of this factor. Job performance refers to individual behavior that contributes
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to organizational goals (Rotundo & Sackett, 2002). Job performance also refers to the
full implementation of technical requirements, that includes specific effort or behavior
to meet the requirements of an organization (Rank et al., 2009). Job performance in
this study is considered to assess the level of performance of employees in terms of
the goals assigned, the self-assessment of the level of performance on his or her own
level.
Hypotheses
Customer Orientation and Emotional Labor
In tourism services sector, managers place strict demands on attitudes and
emotions for employees to follow when serving customers. Frontline service
employees must choose to demonstrate through surface acting (fake positive emotion
or subduce negative emotion) or deep acting (modify emotion to create real positive
emotion displays) or genuine acting to please the customers (Grandey et al., 2005). In
order to create positive displays, employees will adjust themselves and this adjusting
leads to the exhaustion of limited resources, which is the cause of work exhaustion
(Muraven et al., 2006). According to COR, customer orientation can play an important
role as a resource supplementing for the lost resources and influence which strategy
should be chosen (Wu & Shie, 2017). Frontline service employees with high customer
orientation can be awared of the benefit from successful meeting with customers,
therefore they automatically express the desired emotion through joining in deep
acting strategy or genuine acting, and satisfy with their job; in this case, it is less likely
that they choose surface acting while contacting with customers (Babakus et al., 2009;
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Lee et al., 2016; Wu & Shie, 2017). In the contrast, frontline service employees with
low customer orientation, who are passive and pessimistic, will choose surface acting
to express their emotion and have to spend more resources to balance themselves after
that (Wu & Shie, 2017). Frontline employees with high CO naturally express their
genuine emotions or strive to adjust their internal feelings to align them with the
desired emotions. They are more likely to show attitudes and behaviours on their job
that require effort andare less likely to act superficially during service interactions
(Smith et al., 2012). This study thus proposes the following hypotheses:
H1 There is a negative relationship between Customer Orientation and Surface Acting
H2 There is a positive relationship between Customer Orientation and Genuine Acting
H3 There is a positive relationship between Customer Orientation and Deep Acting
Emotional Labor and Job Burnout
Tourism services market is getting more and more competitive, to enhance
service quality and customer satisfaction, organizations build many rules related to
customer service and display. Frontline service employees will have to manage their
emotions and make effort in expressing friendly feelings when interacting with
customers (Karatepe, 2010). Special acting strategies are used to meet organizational
requirements: surface acting (fake emotion), deep acting (actually experience the
desired emotion), genuine acting (sincerely express emotion) (Hochschild, 1983;
McCauley and Gardner, 2016). However, it is important to choose emotional
strategies to serve customers because customers can also distinguish between artificial
or realistic smiles and perception of authenticity can affect customers satisfaction
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(Pugh, 2001). Due to this reason, frontline service employees is directly affected to
their feelings and caused job burnout as an undesirable. The results of previous
research have proved that frontline service employees who selected deep acting could
be able to show emotion more naturally than frontline service employees selecting
surface acting so they were also more satisfied with their job and escaping from job
burnout (Cheung and Lun, 2015; Lee et al., 2015). Lee et al. (2015) pointed out that
deep acting had a positive role in reducing job burnout for employess, while surface
acting could raise stress related to work by exhausting employees’ emotion in serving
customers. Thus, the suggested hypotheses are:
H4 There is a positive relationship between Surface Acting and Job Burnout
H5 There is a negative relationship between Genuine Acting and Job Burnout
H6 There is a negative relationship between Deep Acting and Job Burnout
Customer orientation and Job Burnout
When studying the relationship among customer orientation, emotional labor,
and job burnout, Wu & Shie (2017) applied COR theory to confirm that job burnout
occurs when employees find their resources depleted, it is difficult to regain them and
become stress (Karatepe et al., 2009). Then, as human resource, customer orientation
can be the premise supplementing for the loss of self-resource due to the demand of
that job. Specifically, frontline service employees with high customer orientation can
search and gather the resources needed to overcome obstacles (Harris et al., 2006),
because they have stronger motivation to serve customers. They do not want to lose
their jobs, they feel the customer satisfaction as a motivation and the passing of this
16
stage will help them to succeed. Because of this reason, they view the loss of
resources as just temporary status and believe that through their efforts, the cause of
the loss of resources will decrease (Babakus & Yavas, 2012). Meanwhile, frontline
services employees with low customer orientation, who are less interested in serving
and responding to customer needs, must be forced to follow the display principles.
Because of their passive and pessimistic nature, these efforts consume emotional and
cognitive sources and eventually lead directly to exhaustion (Babakus et al., 2010).
Therefore, frontline service employees in tourism service with high customer
orientation are more likely to perceive their work and get low job burnout. The
hypothesis is as follow:
H7 There is a negative relationship between Customer Orientation and Job Burnout
Job Burnout and Job Performance
Managing job burnout in the workplace is very important, especially at
companies and organizations providing travel services. Job burnout does not only
affect the work attitude, it also affects the performance of each employee. The
emotional, psychological and physical conditions of the staff are found to be
important determinants of the quality of services provided to customers (Mayer,
2002). In particular, frontline service employees usually have to deal with stresses
related to work, leading to high levels of emotional exhaustion. Thus, they can not
accomplish the job performance as expected in the context of orienting customer
service business. A recent study by Choi et al. (2014) notes that emotional exhaustion
can make service employees impatient, causing emotional gap with customers and
17
lead to failure service and low performance. The following is suggested as a
hypothesis for the research:
H8 There is a negative relationship between Job Burnout and Job Performance
Figure 1.: Conceptual model
Method
The research model includes four concepts: customer orientation, emotional
labor, job burnout and job performance. The measurement scale for these conceptual
structures is derived from previous studies that has been mentioned in the proposed
research model and adapted to the context of Vietnam. The study was conducted in
two phases: (1) Pilot study; and (2) The main survey.
Pilot study
Using qualitative method to adjust or supplement observational variables, adjust
the scale in measuring research concepts. In-depth interviews were conducted with 5
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experts / staffs in tourism services sector: 01 CEO of a hotel and travel website, 01
Head of Sale of a travel company, 01 CEO of a travel company, 01 Head of
illustration department of a museum, 01 Head of reception department of a hotel in Ho
Chi Minh City to collect ideas. Their opinions and recommendations for revising the
wording, the number of questions in survey were incorporated into the final survey .
Pilot study’s results show that:
Customer orientation concept with 6 items (Susskind et al., 2007; Susskind et
al., 2003) is adjusted to 5 items, measured by a 5 point Likert scale from 1 (Absolutely
disagree) to 5 (Absolutely agree).
Emotional labor concept with15 items (Chu & Murrmann, 2006) is adjusted to
11 items that are quite similar to those of (Diefendorff et al., 2006), including 3 items
for deep acting, 06 items for surface acting and 02 items for genuine acting. The
Likert scale from 1 (absolutely not right to me) to 5 (absolutely right to me) is used in
this case.
Job burnout concept is discussed based on the version of 22 items of (Bakker et
al., 2002); Experts say that there are many items and burnout in the tourism service
sector in Vietnam is not at such a serious level. Experts agree that job Burnout can be
measured in three categories: emotional burnout, cynicism and professional
inefficacy. After refining, the number of items is reduced to 16 items corresponds to
job burnout concept of Shin, 2003 and Schaufeli et al., 2008. Measurement is based on
7 points Likert from 1 (Never) to 7 (Everyday).
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Job performance concept has 04 items in accordance with Goodman and
Svyantek (1999) and performed a 5 point Likert scale measurement from 1
(Absolutely disagree) to 5 (Absolutely agree).
The screening question should be put at the beginning of the questionnaire to
recognize the valid interviewers.
The main survey
After pilot study, the measurement scale is adjusted to a completed scale and
used for the formal quantitative study. The sample size is based on the 5: 1 principle
(Nguyen, 2013), meaning that for every question, 5 samples are needed. The
measurement scale includes 36 observational variables evaluate 04 research concepts,
09 questions related to sample features (sex, age, education level, level of
employment, occupation, years in industry, years working in the company, monthly
income and customer contact rate); It should have at least 45 * 5 = 225 samples. The
survey was conducted in a convenient method with n = 350. Questionnaires were sent
directly to frontline service employees of travel agencies, hotels, restaurants,
museums, airline ticket agents, and hotel and travel websites in Ho Chi Minh City by
email, messages, phone interview and face to face interview. In order to identify valid
respondents, two screening questions putting at the beginning of the questionnaire
were included “Are you working in the tourism service industry?” and “Do you
contact directly with customers in your work?”. If respondents chose “Yes” for both
questions, they were considered as valid and asked to do the survey at next page. In
case of “No” answer received for just one question, respondents were asked to stop
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