Emotional Labor and Emotional Exhaustion. Does Co-worker Support Matter?

This study examines the emotional labor process, operationalized as surface acting and deep acting, as performed by hotel employees in Sabah, Malaysia. It also investigates the influence of emotional labor on emotional exhaustion, and the potential role of co-worker support in moderating the proposed relationship. Using a self-administered survey questionnaire, data were obtained from a total of 137 hotel workers. Findings on the consequences of emotional labor were consistent with expectations: surface acting positively influenced emotional exhaustion, whereas deep acting was negatively related to emotional exhaustion. Interestingly, co-worker support had reverse buffering effect on the relationship between deep acting and emotional exhaustion. The implications of the findings for the training of Malaysian hotel workers in terms of effective emotion management are also discussed in this paper.