PERFORMING EMOTIONAL LABOUR MODEL STUDYING ITS EFFECT ON TURNOVER INTENTION AND BURNOUT PROCESS OF NURSES IN INDIA

Abstract

newline In today s world, the important characteristic for most of the jobs is to perform emotional labour. Emotional labour is defined as the process where employees regulate their emotional display in an attempt to meet organizationally based expectations specific to their roles. (Brotheridge and Lee 2003). In the service industry, the employers or the managers always want their staff or subordinates to interact with employees properly and display certain kind of emotions during the interactions. These emotions can be that of cheerfulness, friendliness, warmth, confidence, enthusiasm, etc. Managers act on the presumption that the good nature of the employees will be strongly correlated to customer satisfaction and thereby boost customer commitment, customer loyalty, etc. This will have a huge impact on profits as happy customers provide more business to the organizations. Bolton (2001) suggested in his paper that, nursing is one such profession which requires extensive amount of emotion work given the nature of the job. This triggered the thought and idea to study emotional labour in nurses given the unusual context of the organization i.e. hospitals (for eg) and the nature of the service of nurses. newlineThe healthcare industry is undoubtedly India s largest business sectors in terms of employment and revenue. This industry includes hospitals, telemedicine, medical tourism, health insurance, medical equipment etc. The hospitals are categorised into two major components - public and private. The public sector includes providing essential healthcare facilities in the form of primary healthcare centres (PHCs) in rural areas. On the other hand the private sector includes all the secondary, tertiary and quaternary care institutions with major focus on the tier I and tier II cities. This private sector has become the building force in India s health care industry helping it gain both national and international reputation.