UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Tran Thanh Tam Antecedent and Outcomes of Emotional Labor: Evidence from Tourism Industry in Vietnam MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Tran Thanh Tam Antecedent and Outcomes of Emotional Labor: Evidence from Tourism Industry in Vietnam MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION SUPERVISOR: DR. NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Table of Content Abstract. 6 Literature Review and Hypotheses. 23 Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis.
25 Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis. 26 Results of Discriminant Validity. 27 Results of SEM test. 30 Conclusion and Managerial Implications.
32 Limitations and Future Research. Questionnaire English version. Questionnaire Vietnamese version (Bảng câu hỏi khảo sát). 59 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com List of Tables Table 1 : Measurements.
21 Table 2 : Sample Characteristics. 24 Table 3 : Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis. 25 Table 4 : Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis. 27 Table 5 : Results of Discriminant Validity.
28 Table 6 : Results of SEM test. 28 List of Figures Figure 1 : Conceptual model. 18 Figure 2 : SEM model. 51 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the roles of customer orientation and emotional labor on job burnout, then job burnout affects job performance, under a foundation of conservation of resources theory.
Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from a survey of 308 frontline service employees working at travel agencies, restaurants, hotels, airline ticket agents and museums. Then data were analyzed by means of a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Findings – The results indicate that emotional labor strategies affect job burnout, and in turn job burnout affects job performance. Customer orientation does not directly affect job burnout, however, it influences emotional labor strategies.
Practical implications – Managers of tourism services companies may develop a good human resource management system to encourage front-line employees to enhance their performance related to deep acting when serving customers. This, in turn, will reduce their job burnout. Keywords: Customer orientation, Emotional labor, Job burnout, Job performance 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Introduction Nowaday, job burnout is an extremely hot keywork on the internet or in human resources management. There are many articles on the internet warning about this as well as researchers doing research on this topic.
Job burnout concept is used to explain the chronic and accumulative job stress of staff at work (Babakus et al., 2009; Halbesleben, 2006; Sand & Miyazaki, 2000). The consequences of job burnout are considerably serious, the persons who are exhausted in their work feel emotionally exhausted, lack of energy, become suspicious, easily react negatively, should be heartless, or no longer confident in their job (Maslach & Leiter, 2008). Recent scientific studies have confirmed that employees in service industry, especially frontline service employees, are subjects to job burnout (Cho, Bonn, Han, & Lee, 2016; Lee, An, & Noh, 2015; Rahim & Cosby, 2016; Wu & Shie, 2017). The intensity of contact with customers (almost daily), the duty of meeting all requirements related to customers treatment and the enforcement of making customers happy as a job evaluation criterion (Yoo & Arnold, 2014).
Enterprises in service industry are interested in this issue, because the problems related to job burnout can directly affect customers’ satisfaction, employees’ performance results and especially their revenue and profit (Kim et al. In business, especially service industry, customer orientation concept is considered as a crucial characteristic feature that allows employees to carry out their duties at their workplace (Babakus et al., 2009; Wu & Shie, 2017); For example: "Customer is the most important in my job"; "I always try my best to give my customers the best services". Enterprises take customer orientation into employees’ 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com duties as a motto to serve customers, as the value of employees’ work, showing their real concern in providing better services to customers (Brown et al. Previous studies related to job burnout, customer orientation and job performance, emotional labor was usually seen as a mediated factor and was studied in the case of frontline service employees working in service industry, especially hospitality, restaurant and airlines (Cho et al., 2016; Hur et al., 2013; Hur et al., 2015; ; Kim et al., 2012; Lee et al.
Hochschild (1983) defined emotional labor as a process of working by emotion; employees have to join in many different scenarios to arrange their emotion display in accordance with enterprises’ expectation. Specifically, the research of Yoo and Arnold (2014) found that elements of emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) were mediated elements influencing the relationship between customer orientation and emotional exhaustion (an important part of Job burnout). Customer orientation was seen as an adjusting tool to prevent negative impacts of job burnout to job performance. It meant that customer orientation could reduce negative influence of job burnout on job performance of frontline service employees with high customer orientation (Babakus & Yavas, 2012).
In hospitality sector, frontline service employees with high customer orientation always want to serve customers in a polite and helpful way; and always ensure of improving customer service quality (Babakus et al. However, most of research mention frontline service employees in terms of enterprises in retailing, restaurant, hotel, and airline agents but there is not any research mentions frontline service employees in terms of tourism service sector. Specifically, frontline service employees working for travel companies, restaurants and hotels serving group of visitors, visit locations and ticket agents. 7 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Most research on Vietnam tourism service focus on customers.
Customers’ attitude, behavior, feeling and satisfaction are always the main purpose or topic in many surveys and research. Customers are asked about their satisfaction with the service they received and how to get their satisfaction and loyalty. All resolutions stand on the customers’ side. For example, the most recent research studied on customers’ feeling about destination, negative emotion of customers with failure service (Le & Nguyen, 2017; Le & Nguyen, 2018).
Few research studying on the human resources in case of tourism industry or, if so, are incomplete. Especially, no research mentions or explains the relationship among job burnout, emotional labor customer orientation and job performance in tourism service sector. Following the future trend, service sector of Vietnam in general and tourism services in particular are on the trend of growing up and will be developed rapidly and strongly in the coming years (Xuan & Duong, 2017). According to Lien (2017), tourism services had great contribution into Vietnam economy, specifically about 6% in 2016 and 7.5% in 2017 of the national GDP; In 2017, Vietnam welcomed over 10 million visitors, not including domestic sources; And it is expected to have from 13 million to 15 million guests visiting Vietnam in 2018.
However, statistics showed that there are only about 750,000 direct workers and 2.2 million indirect workers working in tourism sector (Chau, 2017). This is a low figure, the rate of increase in labor of this sector is even lower than the rate of increase in the number of visitors. This reality leads to tourism industry staff are usually under tremendous pressure on the workload and the requirements of satifying customers. The problems of human resources, especially high-quality human resources that are not sufficiently met the industry need (Chau, 8 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2017), is a challenge that requires managers to create solutions that inspire the passion, enthusiasm and commitment to reduce job burnout and retain frontline service employees while waiting for the persons being trained.
This study aims to investigate the impact of customer orientation on emotional labor, job burnout, and job performance of frontline service employees in tourism industry. Through this research, tourism services companies can have realistic understanding of the human resources, thereby developing a better management strategy to encourage employees to increase their performance related to Emotional Labor Strategies to serve customers, motivate them to be loyal to the company, commit to serve customers well, increase work efficiency and reduce work exhaustion. Literature Review and Hypotheses Literature Review Conservation of resources (COR) theory COR theory is based on the basic rule that persons try to minimize the loss of resources. The main concept of this theory is the loss of resources.
Actually, the persons who have more resources, are more likely to avoid stress than the persons not having much resources (Alarcon et al. Persons focus on collecting, maitaining, fostering and protecting resources to avoid losing valuable resources. In addition, the resources are value-added elements that can create change and assist in replenishing lost resources (Alvaro et al. The first principle of COR theory focuses on the dynamic force of resource losses versus resource benefits (be motivated by loss).
It 9 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com means that the persons who lose their resources, will motivate themselves to improve the lost resources figures (regain lost ones) or focus on their own weaknesses, and lose more resources (Woo, 2014). The second principle focuses on resources investing to protect against loss of resources, restore lost resources and promote the collection of additional resources to prevent future deficits (Alarcon et al. Customer Orientation (CO) In accordance with the definition of Babakus et al. (2009), customer orientation is an important personality trait that allows employees to implement their duties at work.
Customer orientation is a psychological resource that creates the desired working results because customer orientation helps shaping employee perceptions and attitudes toward their work. Specifically, customer orientation employees can timely resolve customer requirements and issues, treat customers politely and nicely, and maintain a consistent level of emotion in their interaction with customers. As individual level, customer orientation was considered as a personality trait (Brown et al., 2002), a mixture of attitude and behavious (Stock & Hoyer, 2005). Frontline service employees with high customer orientation tend to provide good services in a natural way.
They prefer working and believe that providing timely and effective services to customers is a major function of their work (Wu, Shie, & Gordon, 2017). Customer orientation at enterprise-level is generalized as an organizational culture, an active collective process that leads to organizational success (Brockman et al., 2012; Hanzaee & Mirvaisi, 2011; Wu & Shie, 2017). 10 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com In this study, COR theory is also used as a fundamental theory, explaining the relationship among factors customer orientation, emotional labor, job burnout, and job performance. Customer orientation is viewed as a personality trait of frontline service employees in tourism services.
Emotional Labor (EL) Emotional labor, which is also known as emotion labor or emotion labour, or emotional labour, is an important and essential part in service sector (Bu et al. Emotional labor has been proved to have an impact on the efficiency of organizations and individuals (Grandey et al. Emotional labor is defined as the management of emotional expression in order to create appropriate visual display of the face and the body, based on organization desires. There are two different types of emotional labor action strategy: surface acting (SA) and deep acting (DA) (Hochschild, 1983).
Surface acting refers to the management of external emotional expression without any change in inner feelings, which is also known as emotional impersonation, while deep acting relates to an effort to create desired emotional display (Burch et al. In the positive case, the employee represents surface acting at the request of organization to improve organization performance or to please service recipient. For example, employees smile because they know customers like it, though they do not really feel happy.