Emotional Labour and Organizational Role Stress: A Study of Aircraft Employees

Abstract

The present study is conducted to investigate the emotional labour and organizational role stress of pilots, airhostesses and air traffic controllers. An emotional labour scale (Grandey, 2003) and an organizational role stress scale (Pareek, 1993) are administered on a sample of 90 aircraft employees. A one-way ANOVA test revealed that the three groups of aircraft employees differ significantly among each other in their emotional labour (F = 31.92; P < 0.001) and organizational role stress (F = 44.26; P < 0.001). More specifically, air traffic controllers are observed to have significantly higher organizational role stress compared to pilots and airhostesses; whereas airhostesses are observed to have significantly high emotional labour compared to pilots and air traffic controllers. Further stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed the factors significantly contributed to emotional labour and organizational role stress of aircraft employees. Findings of the study are helpful for the aircraft management authorities to come out with different strategies to improvise the emotional labour and organizational role stress.

Keywords

Pilots air traffic controller deep acting surface acting and role stress

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Arvey

R.D.

Renz

G.L.

Watson

W.W.

(1998). Emotionality and job performance: Implications for personnel selection. In Ferris

G.R.

(Ed.), Research in personal and human research management (pp. 16, 103–147). Greenwich, CT: Jai Press.

Ashforth

B.E.

Humphrey

R.H.

(1993). Emotional labour in service roles: The influence of identity. Academy of Management Review, 18(1), 88–115.

Ashforth

B.C.

Tomiuk

M.A.

(2000). Emotional labour and authenticity: Views from service agents. In Fineman

(Ed.), Emotion in organizations (2nd Ed) (pp. 184–203). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Babin

B.J.

Boles

J.S.

(1998). Employee behavior in a service environment: A model and test of potential differences between men and women. Journal of Marketing, 62(2), 77.

Beehr

T.A.

(1995). Psychological stress in the workplace. London, UK: Routledge.

Bettencourt

L.A.

Gwinner

K.D.

Meuter

M.L.

(2001). A comparison of attitude, personality, and knowledge predictions of service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviours. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(1), 29–41.

Bhattacharya

Basu

(2007). Distress, wellness and organizational role stress among IT professionals: Role of life events and coping resources. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 33(2),169–78.

Elloy

D.F.

Smith

C.R.

(2003). Patterns of stress, work–family conflict, role conflict, role ambiguity and overload among dual career couples: An Australian study. Cross Cultural Management, 10(1), 55–66.

Grandey

(2000). Emotion regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional labour. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5(1), 95–110.

10.

Grandey

Alicia A.

(2003). When the show must go on: Surface acting and deep acting as determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Academy of Management Journal, 46(1), 86–96.

11.

Gross

(1998). Antecedent and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 224–237.

12.

Grove

S.J.

Fisk

R.P.

(1989). Impression management in service marketing: A dramaturgical perspective. In Giacalone

R.A.

Rosenfeld

(Eds), Impression management in the organization (pp. 427–38). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

13.

Harris

K.J.

James

Boothanom

(2005). Perceptions of organizational politics and cooperation as moderators of the relationship between job strains and intent to turnover. Journal of Managerial Issues, 17(1), 26–42.

14.

Hochschild

A.R.

(1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

15.

Kahn

(1995). Group process checkpoints for team learning in the class room. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 14(2), 310–326.

16.

Kahn

R.L.

Wolfe

D.D.

Quinn

R.P.

Snoek

J.D.

Rosenthal

R.A.

(1964). Organizational stress, studies in role conflict and ambiguity. New York: John Wiley.

17.

Katz

Kahn

R.L.

(1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley.

18.

Mintzberg

(1983). Power in and around organization. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

19.

O’Driscoll

M.P.

Cooper

C.L.

(1996). Source and management of excessive job stress and burnout (4th edition). New York: Penguin.

20.

Parasuraman

Zeithaml

V.A.

Berry

L.L.

(1985). A conceptual model of service quality and its implication for future research. Journal of Marketing, 49(4), 41–50.

21.

Pareek

(1976). Inter-role exploration. In Pfeiffer

J.W.

Jones

J.E.

(Eds), The 1976 annual handbook for group facilitators (pp. 211–224). San Diego, CA: University Associates.

22.

Pareek

(1993). Organization role stress. Training instruments in HRD and OD (2nd Edition). New Delhi: Tata Mcgraw Hill.

23.

Pareek

(2003). Training Instruments in HRD and OD. Bombay: Tata McGraw Hill.

24.

Pestonjee

D.M.

Pareek

(1997). Studies in organizational role stress and coping. New Delhi: D.K. Publishers.

25.

Pugh

S.D.

(2001). Service with a smile: Emotional contagion in the service encounter. Academy of Management Journal, 44(5),1018–1027.

26.

Rafaeli

Sutton

R.I.

(1987). Expression of emotion as part of the work role. Academy of Management Review, 12(1), 23–37.

27.

Readeke

T.D.

Smith

A.W.

(2004). Coping resources and athlete burnout: An examination of stress mediated moderation hypotheses. Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology, 26(1), 525–541.

28.

Rupert

P.A.

Morgan

D.J.

(2005). Work setting and burnout among professional psychologists. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 36(5), 544–550.

29.

Shelton

Alan

. (2007). Transforming burnout: A simple guide to self-renewal. Vibrant Press.