Effect of Emotional Labor on Emotional Exhaustion and Customer Orientation in Hotel Employees : Focused on Mediating Effect of Emotional Exhaustion

This research was conducted to analyze a casual relationship between emotional labor(deep acting and surface acting) and emotional exhaustion, and between emotional exhaustion customer orientation from a hotel employee’s perspective. Also this research was conducted to analyze the mediating effects of emotional exhaustion in the causal relationships. Based on the theoretical predictions, empirical test was conducted. The data acquired from 219 consumers who used 5-star hotels in Busan of Korea was analyzed utilizing structural equation modeling(SEM). The research findings were as follows. First, deep acting positively influenced customer orientation, while surface acting didn't influence customer orientation. Second, deep acting negatively influenced emotional exhaustion and surface acting positively influenced emotional exhaustion. Third, emotional exhaustion negatively influenced customer orientation. Fourth, emotional exhaustion had mediating effects in the causal relationship between emotional labor and customer orientation. Based on these results, first, it is necessary for hotel companies to make a system for invigorating deep acting and second, it is inevitable for hotel CEOs or superiors or co-workers to provide supports to emotional laborers, and to make measures for curing emotional labor and third, it is unavoidable for hotel CEOs to provide suitable job allocation, department arrangement and task conversion for relieving hotel employee’s emotional exhaustion, and fourth, it is needed of rewards for hotel CEOs to make hotel employees increase the level of deep acting which can lead to the decrease of their emotional exhaustion.