Emotional Labour and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour: Case of Regency Hotels (Masvingo)

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between emotional labour and organizational citizenship behaviours at Regency hotels in Masvingo town. The researchers used Hoschild’s Emotional Labour Theory which postulates that employees must always suppress their emotions in order to produce the desired emotional state during working time. To test the veracity of this theory in Zimbabwe, a quantitative survey research design was employed to collect data from the field.The data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20 (SPSS v20). The study found that employees suffer from emotional labour through surface-acting and deep working time. It was also established that both surface and deep-acting have negative and positive effects to citizenship behaviour. As such positive emotions that employees come to experience during service delivery trigger positive citizenship behaviour and at the same time, negative emotions that employees experience through surface-acting can easily induce negative citizenship behaviours. The study recommends that service industries should implement emotional display rules to regulate employee’s behaviours during service delivery.