Role of leaders’ emotional labor toward leader’s job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion: Moderating role of psychological capital

Everyone has to manage their emotions during their interactions with others; the leaders of organizations are no different. Leaders actively and continually regulate their emotional state. The crucial role of emotions in the interactional process, as well in decision-making, triggers leaders to be vigilant about their emotional labor strategies. Thus, emotional labor has become an emerging construct in the leadership domain. This study has collected data from 250 doctors working in private and public hospitals in Gujranwala. The measurement model was employed for confirmation of the validity and internal consistency of the measures. PLS-SEM was used for testing the hypotheses. The findings demonstrated that the leaders’ deep acting, as well as their displays of natural emotions, are positively associated with job satisfaction and negatively associated with the leaders’ emotional exhaustion. Moreover, surface acting has a significant positive relationship with the leaders’ emotional exhaustion and a negative relationship with the leaders’ job satisfaction. Psychological capital significantly moderated the relationship between the leaders’ emotional labor strategies (surface acting and deep acting), their job satisfaction, and their emotional exhaustion. Whereas it did not moderate the relationship between the leaders’ displays of genuine emotions, their job satisfaction, and their emotional exhaustion.