Customer Orientation as a Moderator of Emotional Labor-Outcome Relationships

In a sample of hotel employees, we examined the relationships between emotional labor (i.e., surface acting, deep acting, naturally felt emotions) and two proposed outcomes (job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion) as moderated by customer orientation. Results were significant for customer orientation as a moderator of the relationships between surface acting and job satisfaction and between naturally felt emotions and both job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. These results extend work on the boundary conditions of research findings on emotional labor. We suggest that encouraging employees to exhibit more authentic emotions or to be consistent between their felt and expressed emotions could potentially facilitate more positive outcomes such as job satisfaction and reduce negative outcomes such as emotional exhaustion, particularly for employees with higher customer orientation.