Investigation of the relationship between emotional labor, individual performance and work alienation: A research on sales consultants

Today, the presentation in service has become important. Therefore, organizations give importance to customer satisfaction in order to gain competitive advantage. Organizations determine some emotional behavior rules in order to ensure customer satisfaction and make customers feel better. Employees must comply with these rules of conduct during service delivery. Thus, emotions are included in the work done physically and mentally, and emotions become a part of the work. On the other hand, the fact that people have to exhibit emotional behavior rules that are incompatible with their real feelings during work can affect them negatively. In this respect, the concept of emotional labor has been the main concept focused on within the scope of the thesis. The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between the emotional labor behaviors and individual performances of sales consultants and their work alienation. Questionnaire technique was used as a data collection tool in the research. In this context, data were collected on 255 sales consultants working in shopping malls in Trabzon. Descriptive statistical analysis, reliability analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis were performed during the data analysis process. According to the results of the analysis, it was determined that emotional labor behavior has a significant and positive effect on work alienation. In the study, it was determined that surface acting and the expression of emotions naturally felt did not have a significant effect on work alienation as a whole, but that deep acting had a significant and positive effect on the dimensions of self alienation and autonomy. In addition, it was determined that individual performance has a significant and positive effect on work alienation and subdimensions.