Journal of Tourism & Hospitality
Open Access

Abstract

Task Performance Repair by Emotions of Human Service Employees

Noriko Okabe

Emotional labor aspects of flight attendants were hypothesized to be significantly and moderate the relationship between role ambiguity and task performance in the changed organizational climate. A questionnaire survey was administered to 413 flight attendants working for an Asian airline. A 5-point Likert-type scale was employed to assess the aspects of the role ambiguity (RA) and emotional labor aspects. The results show that “surface acting” moderates the negative effect on task performance, when RA is lowly perceived. On the other hand, when the level of the RA is highly perceived by employees, “surface acting” might not able to moderate the negative effect on task performance of employer. Since the high perception of RA might lead the employees to feel the dilemma about how much of themselves to give to their roles and how much to protect themselves from the RA, suggesting their emotional exhaustion, moreover, to burnout propensity.
The contemporary human service employees perceive certain kind of role ambiguity or dilemma in the changing industrial climate, even though they clearly understand their roles. Using emotional labor as a psychological tool in a human service interaction, particularly in the speed-up situations that the employees perceived role ambiguity, can help moderate or repair the downward propensity to task performance. Thus, by using the right tool (or remedy) at the right place, the employees can have an effect. The way to offer hospitality make differentiates a company from others, particularly in the recent trend that IT and automate machine substitute jobs that used to be done by employees. Emotional competence makes the employees possible to execute the quality of service with hospitality. Emotionally competent employees provide an organization with harmony and integrity and can increase the competitiveness of the company because the employees effectively adapt the company’s strategy and work efficiently.