E-motional labor: the expression of emotions in mediated service organizations

The dissertation aims at exploring the expression of emotions in mediated service organizations. More precisely, the goal of the study is to examine how service providers express their emotions while interacting with customers via electronic mail. Accordingly, the dissertation integrates different research areas, such as emotional labor, social and psychological implications of computer-mediated communication and customer service interaction. The study emphasizes the unique contribution of each area to the understanding of the phenomenon under study. Based on the theories that underline these research areas, one research question and eight directional hypotheses are presented. In addition, the study presents a conceptual model. The model describes how the antecedents of emotional labor, e.g., individual characteristics, organizational characteristics, customer service interaction characteristics and computer-mediated communication characteristics, influence the way service providers perform emotional labor, which in turn might lead to burnout sensations among service providers.The study investigates and compares three different organizational sites that provide services via electronic mail. To do that, the study applies multiple sources of data, such as: group interview, organizational statements, field observation, semi-structured interviews, survey, and email analysis.The major finding of the study is that contrary to Hochschild's (1983) argument that jobs that involve emotional labor require face-to-face or voice-to voice interaction, the service providers in the study did engage in emotional labor via electronic mail. Thus, service providers managed the display of their emotions by suppressing their felt emotions and displaying a neutral tone.