Examination of Factors Affecting Hotel Employees’ Service Orientation: An Emotional Labor Perspective

Given that the quality of the interpersonal interaction between customers and hospitality employees plays a critical role in customer satisfaction, both the concepts of emotion in the workplace and service orientation toward customers have attracted a great deal of interest in the hospitality industry. However, although the two concepts have strong theoretical relevance to one another, research about what emotional factors affect employee service-oriented commitments is lacking. This empirical study investigated the roles and compared the effects of emotional determinants that affect service orientation of hotel managers and line employees. Data were collected from 309 customer-contact hotel managers and line employees in the United States. Results of hierarchical regression analysis revealed that display rule perception, emotional intelligence, and sense of accomplishment have positive effects, whereas depersonalization has a negative effect, on service orientation. The results of this study also indicated that for line employees, display rule perception and depersonalization have more influence on predicting service orientation than for managers, whereas depersonalization has no effect on service orientation for managers. Emotional exhaustion had no significant effect on service orientation for either group. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research are provided.