Effect of emotional labour on emotional exhaustion: a study of retail sector in India

Services involving direct interactions with customers require employees to manage how they present their emotions during service encounters. Emotional labour has been posed as the management of emotional displays at work. Several times expressing emotions that one does not feel during service encounters can be stressful for service employees. The ability of the service providers to deal with the inherent stresses and emotional demands of their working environment as they perform emotional labour has an impact on their behaviour. Job demand stressor may lead to emotional exhaustion. The present study examines the impact of emotional labour on emotional exhaustion in retail sector in India. It measures the emotional labour with 19 items scales which include emotional dissonance and emotive effort. The findings of the study indicated that emotional dissonance lead to more emotional exhaustion while the emotive efforts decrease the emotional exhaustion.