The Impact of Emotional Dissonance on Employee Stress: A Study of Frontline Employees in Service Industry

Abstract

There is a major global shift in economy which makes the service sector emerge than ever before. In this competitive environment the front line employees have to play a crucial role in leading businesses to success by satisfying its customers. Hence, organizations impose different rules to display emotions which its employees are expected to adhere. Every employee doesn’t feel the same and they are not in the same emotion when they work. Sometimes organizational expectation (Display rules) and emotional status of employee at the moment tend to clash, that leads to emotional dissonance which can be a cause of stress. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of emotional dissonance on employee stress of ground level/frontline employees in service sector organizations in Sri Lanka. Further, the current study was designed to identify whether frontline employees feel emotional dissonance while they work and does it influence on stressing them. This is a cross-industry descriptive research & a standard questionnaire was used to collect primary data through a survey. This study is quantitative in nature. The data for the present study were collected from 141 front line employees working in various organizations and the data is analyzed by using SPSS. Existing, established scales were used to measure the research constructs. The results of the study indicate a positive relationship between emotional dissonance and employee stress and also found a significant positive impact of emotional dissonance on employee stress. The major recommendation based on the findings is that, service sector organizations should focus on building deep acting skills within employees because that is the sustainable solution for Employee Stress cause by Emotional Dissonance. Other than that, as short term solutions organizations can give recognition for the work they are doing, praise them and reward them financially and non-financially.