Toward a more pre-emptive approach to managing work emotions and emotional labor

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Purpose: To propound a broadened perspective on emotional labor management by exploring mitigatory approaches that could be pre-emptively deployed prior to actual episodic experiences of emotional dissonance and their associated negative consequences (e.g. burnout). At present, the management of emotional labor appears to skew toward reactive measures, such as deploying employee assistance programs (EAPs) to assist overwhelmed employees in coping better with their emotional demands, reducing job-related emotional demands or a combination of both. Design/methodology/approach: Intricate processes of emotion emergence and established literature on emotion regulation are considered. By conceptualizing emotion emergence as a process entailing situation, attention, appraisal and response, current efforts can be seen as primarily acting upon the late stages of this process. General emotion regulation strategies that act upon more upstream processes are then considered and applied to the specific context of emotional labor. Findings: Pre-emptive steps could be taken from the early stages of job selection as well as personnel selection and assessment through systematic and concerted efforts in identifying job-related emotional demands (e.g. specific display rules, frequency and intensity). Formal job descriptions could then reflect these demands to better facilitate self-selection processes. Additionally, considering these identified parameters as personnel selection and assessment criteria could further enhance person-job fit in terms of emotional congruency. For current hires, pre-emptive steps could also be taken to subliminally modulate their emotional emergence trajectory toward more job-congruent emotions. Collectively, these steps may facilitate the pre-emptive reduction of emotionally dissonant work episodes and bear substantive potential to be deployed synergistically with current, more reactive measures. Originality/value: This paper offers a broadened perspective on emotional labor management. Through considering intricate processes of emotion emergence and established literature on emotion regulation, a pre-emptive perspective toward managing work emotions and emotional labor is propounded. It is believed that the synergistic incorporation of these pre-emptive management approaches with current strategies (e.g. reducing emotional demands, EAPs, etc.) would holistically allow for greater amelioration of this debilitating issue. Finally, it is hoped that this paper could serve as a primer for future research and discourses to be conducted, such that our arsenal available for combating emotional labor could be substantively expanded to holistically target all stages of the emotion emergence process.

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