Does Servant Leadership Affect Employees’ Emotional Labor? A Social Information-Processing Perspective

Junting Lu (), Zhe Zhang () and Ming Jia ()
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Junting Lu: Xi’an Jiaotong University
Zhe Zhang: Xi’an Jiaotong University
Ming Jia: Northwestern Polytechnical University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 159, issue 2, No 13, 507-518

Abstract: Abstract Emotion management in the workplace is drawing increasing attention from researchers. However, they still know little about how positive leadership affects employees’ emotional labor. Building on social information-processing theory, we examine whether and how a servant leadership style influences employees’ emotional labor. Using a sample of 305 employees in 81 work units of 25 subcorporations at a food company in China, we find that servant leadership relates negatively to surface acting (i.e., regulating facial expressions) but relates positively to deep acting (i.e., regulating inner feelings) at work. We also find that the indirect effect of servant leadership on surface/deep acting via affective trust is stronger than the indirect effect via cognitive trust. Our research reveals that servant leadership influences employees’ emotional labor more through affective trust than cognitive trust. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Keywords: Servant leadership; Affective trust; Cognitive trust; Surface acting; Deep acting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-018-3816-3

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