Effects of emotional and social competencies on aesthetic labor: A restaurant chain sample

Satisfying the customer needs in restaurant businesses has become a paramount advantage in gaining competition. Today in the restaurant businesses, there is a transformation of the labor display of the employee from the physical and mental dimensions to the emotional and aesthetic dimensions. Depending on these experienced developments, emotional and social competencies play a significant role in the performance of employees. In addition to that, it seen that aesthetic displays are essential in ensuring customer satisfaction. Evaluation of employee performance or evaluation of the employee labor according to emotional and social competencies along with aesthetic performance are very imperative in terms of today's restaurant businesses and their managers. In this study, the effect of managers' emotional and social competence on the aesthetic labor of the employees (service and kitchen) has been investigated. The study was conducted with the questionnaire technique. The extent of the study is constituted of 641 people working in 36 branches of a chain restaurant business in Turkey. As a result of the analyzes performed, it was detected that the emotional and social competencies of the managers have an effect on the aesthetic labor of the service employees (aesthetic characteristic, aesthetic requirement and service encounter) and the kitchen employees (aesthetic characteristic, aesthetic creativity and aesthetic harmony). Success orientation and harmony from the emotional competence dimensions of the managers make the strongest contribution on aesthetic labor effect. As for the social competence, it was figured out that the inspiring leadership and conflict management are the influential aspects. According to the results gained from the research findings, it was detected that the managers rated themselves higher than the employees in all the dimensions of emotional and social competencies. Managers perceive employees' aesthetic feature, aesthetic needs and service encounter higher compared to service employees. In the aesthetic labor, aesthetic feature and aesthetic harmony of kitchen employees, the managers perceived it higher than the employees while no difference in the dimension of aesthetic creativity has been determined. The achieved findings are regarded as noteworthy since it provides far-reaching clues towards the fact that the emotional and social competencies of managers are important in increasing the aesthetic labor of employees.