The Impact of Emotional Labor on Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior of Medical Staff: Taking Organizational Identification as an Intermediary

Abstract

: Medical and health services are a special service-oriented industry. The emotional labor of medical staff must meet their hospital’s established norms and organizational rules. In the process of carrying out emotional labor, however, medical staff members are likely to show non-self-regarding unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). Previous studies on UPB from the perspective of cognition and emotion have mainly focused on the field of business services and organizational behavior. However, there is a lack of research on this topic in the field of medical services. To explore the mechanism behind the impact of medical staff’s emotional labor on their UPB, this study conducted a survey of 261 Chinese medical staff, using organizational identification as an intermediary variable. Results showed that surface behaviors of emotional labor of the medical staff negatively affect organizational identification, which positively affects UPB; the surface behaviors also negatively affect UPB, and organizational identity partly mediates the result of surface behaviors and UPB; deep behaviors of emotional labor of the medical staff positively affects organizational identification, which, in turn, positively affects UPB; and deep behaviors also positively affect UPB, while organizational identity partly mediates the two. The results show that in order to effectively eliminate or avoid medical staff’s UPB, hospital managers should take medical staff ‘s real work experience as the standard, and actively pay attention to their emotional resources and the change of organizational identity. Simultaneously, hospitals should also strengthen the cognition of medical staff on professional rules, and actively educate and guide them in implementing emotional labor behavior.