Organizational Psychology

Purpose. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the mediating role of emotional labor strategies between display rule demands and job satisfaction among customer services employees. Methodology. The present study used a cross-sectional survey research design. Self-reportmeasures in English language including Emotion Work Requirement Scale (Best et al., 1997); Emotional Labor Scale (Brotheridge, Lee, 2003); and job satisfaction subscale of Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire (Camman et al., 1979) were used to operationalize the focal constructs of the present study in a purposive sample (N = 232) of customer services employees of banking and telecommunication sectors from Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Sargodha cities of Pakistan. Findings. Path analysis through Amos revealed that integrative display rules had a positive direct influence on deepacting and job satisfaction, whereas emotional masking had a positive direct influence on surface acting. Surface acting not only demonstrated the negative direct effect on job satisfaction but also fully mediated between emotional masking and job satisfaction. Research limitations. Owing to the self-report data and survey research design, the findings of the present study did not delineate the causal effects. However,our results do suggest that integrative display rules should be made explicit in customer services sothat customer services employee regulate their emotions through deep acting. Emotional masking, on the other hand, should be discouraged as it may lead the employees to surface act, which in turn may reduce their job satisfaction. Value of the results. The present research empirically demonstrated that customer services employees following emotional masking display rules were more likely to engage insurface acting, which in turn may jeopardize their job satisfaction. Therefore, service organizations must promote integrative display rules and deep acting for the emotional regulation of customer services employees.