Grin and Bear It?: Employees' Use of Surface Acting During Co‐worker Conflict

Abstract

Using survey data from 459 employed individuals, the conditional indirect effects of three types of interpersonal conflict at work on strains and performance through surface acting were tested. Results indicated that task, relationship and non-task organizational conflict were positively related to depressive and physical symptoms and negatively related to performance. Task conflict had a significantly weaker association with employee outcomes than either relationship or non-task organizational conflict. Surface acting negatively related to all types of conflict, although it had a weaker association with relationship conflict than task or non-task organizational conflict. Support was found for moderated mediation relationships whereby surface acting mediated the associations between all types of conflict with depressive symptoms, as well as the association between relationship and non-task organizational conflict with physical symptoms, when conflict was infrequent. Surface acting also mediated the associations between all types of conflict and performance when conflict was frequent. Future research directions are discussed that can advance our theoretical understanding of how emotional labour and interpersonal conflict interact to affect employees, as well as further our ability to improve employee well-being and organizational functioning. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Emotional Labor, Role Characteristics, and Police Officer Burnout in South Korea: The Mediating Effect of Emotional Dissonance

“…Second, although emotional labor is conceptualized as stemming from interactions with citizens or clients, past studies measured global stressors, with no specific reference to citizens or clients. This may lead to confounding effects, as these measures may capture emotional regulation caused by interpersonal conflicts within the organization, such as with supervisors or coworkers (Nixon, Bruk-Lee, & Spector, 2017). Finally, few studies on police burnout have accounted for officers’ ability to regulate emotions (see Schaible & Gecas, 2010).…”

Daily deep acting toward coworkers: An examination of day‐specific antecedents and consequences

“…Findings showed that those engaging in surface acting toward coworkers suffered from higher emotional exhaustion and lower job performance. Similarly, Hu and Shi (2015) as well as Nixon et al (2017) found negative outcomes of surface acting toward coworkers, including impaired relationships with coworkers and physical symptoms. Further studies extended these findings to group meetings, showing a negative relationship between surface acting toward coworkers in meetings and meeting effectiveness (Shanock et al, 2013; Thomas et al, 2018).…”

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“…Interpersonal conflict is a social stressor that measures disagreements between parties (Spector & Jex, 1998), and has been discussed under the broader workplace aggression construct, comprised of variables such as incivility, bullying, social undermining, and abusive supervision that vary across several defining characteristics, including intensity (Hershcovis, 2011). Interpersonal conflict has been linked to decreased job satisfaction (Ilies, Johnson, Judge, & Keeney, 2011), low performance (Mulki et al., 2015; Nixon, Bruk‐Lee, & Spector, 2017), high turnover intentions (Frone, 2000), stress (Mulki et al., 2015), and physical health symptoms (Nixon et al., 2011, 2017).…”