Emotional Labour and Counterproductive Workplace Behaviour: Evidence from Banking Sector in India

Banking sector, being the barometer of a country, portrays the real picture of the economic advancement of a country. The Indian banking sector is currently valued at Rs 81 trillion (IBEF, 2013) and is emerged as the key driving force of Indian economy. As per the industry reports, the sector has the potential to become one of the five leading banking industry in the world by 2020 (IBEF, 2013). On the other hand this fact can't be denied that escalating globalisation and ruthless competition are altering the whole outlook of Indian economy and banking sector is no exception to this event. The facade of Indian banking has totally changed and revolves around the paradigm of "customer service", which has rather become a requirement than an option in the financial sector. Employees of the bank as the part of their job of providing the service to the customer, are supposed to express desired emotions in their face-to-face interactions with the bank customers and with this aim to display the appropriate emotions to the customers, the individuals sometimes hide or fake felt emotions, or they try to experience the expected emotion, which results in strain/stress. Employees, therefore, are exposed to significant pressures in their jobs, which ultimately affects their work and personal life. Appreciating the growing importance of emotions in banking sector jobs, the present study aims to scrutinize the impact of emotional labour (surface acting, deep acting, emotional consonance, and suppression) on employee job satisfaction and counterproductive workplace behaviour in Indian banking sector as its setting. The study has taken a large chunk of Indian banking sector i.e. nationalized banks as its sampling frame. Results revealed that emotional labour was a better predictor of job satisfaction as compared to CWB and the proposed mediating relationship was partially supported. Research findings and its implications for theory and practice are further discussed.