Hospitality Front-line Employees: A Meta-Analysis of Emotion Management at Work

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to summarize extant empirical findings on how front-line service employees experience and manage emotions at work. When consolidated, the research on front-line employee emotions revealed mixed and contradictory results and knowledge gaps on workplace challenges of service-oriented employees. The PRISMA were followed for study selection, and the appraisal theory of emotions was used to classify the direct antecedents and outcomes of emotion management. To calculate meta-analytic effect sizes, comprehensive meta-analysis methodology wasapplied to analyze 79 studies (N=28,332). The summary effects of known antecedents, affective events (conflict, customer interactions), stimuli (personality characteristics), and workplace environment (support and display rules) on front-line employees’ emotion management were more modest than previously indicated. Organization, supervisor, and coworker support were found to be a moderator between conflict and employees’ emotion management. The most-researched outcomes of emotion management (burnout and job performance) also showed only modest effect sizes. Job satisfaction was a moderator between emotion management and job performance. The relationship between emotion management and customer-related antecedents and outcomes showed modest to small effect sizes. These results contribute to the ATE and highlight the knowledge gap on how customer emotions and behaviors affect front-line employees’ ability to manage their emotions and provide quality customer service and, in turn, how employee’s transference of emotions might influence customer satisfaction, loyalty, and trust. Managers should provide necessary support to mitigate the impact of affective events that may influence how front-line employees manage emotions at work to increase job satisfaction and performance.