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I work for my own: The effect of psychological ownership on emotional labor

I work for my own: The effect of psychological ownership on emotional labor

Primary Author: Lu Yuan

Faculty Sponsor: Jenny Kim

 

Primary College/Unit: Carson College of Business

Category: Business, Communication, and Politial Sciences

Campus: Pullman

 

Abstract:

 

PRINCIPAL TOPIC

Service workers experience stress not only from frivolous behavioral tasks but emotional display rules required during customer contacts. Stress grows even larger when authentic emotions differ from required expressions during work. Psychological ownership in the organization induces affective attachment, makes employees consider the organization as their extended self and feel responsible for customers to benefit the firm. Consequently, personal goals keep consistent with organizational goals and this enables employees to display genuine, positive emotions and service behavior. This influence of psychological ownership on employees’ customer-oriented behavior and emotional acting, which refers to emotional labor, have drawn little attention up to now.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of employees’ psychological ownership on their emotional labor directly and indirectly through customer orientation. Additionally, this paper explores how job autonomy interacts with customer orientation and affects employees’ deep and surface acting behavior.

METHOD

Survey data were collected from 251 employees in 4 Chinese 5-star hotels. All the variables were measured by reliable scales developed and validated by existing studies. SEM was employed for the paths analysis.

RESULTS/IMPLICATIONS

Results demonstrate psychological ownership has a positive, direct influence on deep acting and an indirect influence on deep acting through customer orientation. Conversely, psychological ownership shows a direct, negative association with surface acting, and an indirect association with surface acting through customer orientation. Further, the positive influence of customer orientation on deep acting is stronger in a high-autonomy condition. This moderation effect does not show for surface acting.

 

The effect of mindsets and ex-offenders’ redemptive narratives on managers’ willingness to consider hiring ex-offenders

The effect of mindsets and ex-offenders’ redemptive narratives on managers’ willingness to consider hiring ex-offenders

Primary Author: Eunjeong Shin

Faculty Sponsor: Jerry Goodstein

 

Primary College/Unit: Carson College of Business

Category: Business, Communication, and Politial Sciences

Campus: Pullman

 

Abstract:

Principal Topic

The United States has been one of the most punitive countries with the highest rate of incarceration. Previous research has suggested that employers play an essential role in reintegrating ex-offenders back to the community as they offer job opportunities. This paper aims to investigate managers’ mindsets that influence their willingness to consider hiring ex-offenders. I explored two categories of managers’ mindsets – justice mindsets (punitive and restorative mindsets) and fixed vs. growth mindsets – and how ex-offenders’ use of redemptive narratives moderate the relationships between managers’ mindsets and their hiring decisions.

 

Method

We collected data from 251 U.S. managers from various industries through Amazon M-Turk. All participants were randomly assigned to read one of the two versions of the scenarios (either high or low redemptive narrative) and were then asked to indicate their willingness to consider hiring the applicant with a 7-points Likert scale. I adopted the existing justice mindsets and fixed vs. growth mindset scale to measure managers’ mindsets. We used SPSS hierarchical regression analysis to analyze the data.

 

Results / implications

The results indicated that all four mindsets significantly influenced the managers’ hiring decision, supporting our hypotheses. Managers with punitive or fixed mindset were less willingness to consider hiring ex-offenders while managers with restorative or growth mindset were more willingness to consider hiring ex- offenders. The moderating effect of redemptive narrative was not supported. Interestingly, however, contrary to our expectation, high usage of ex-offender’s redemptive narratives was negatively related to managers’ willingness to consider hiring the applicant.