The Role of Leadership on Emotion Regulation, Service Delivery, and Health: A Multi-Level Study

Prior research on emotional labor has primarily been conducted at the individual level. In this paper, we examine a model of unit employee emotional labor and its relationships with unit LMX and LMX differentiation as well as with unit employee outcomes. Results from 701 employees and 117 managers from 117 branches of a real-estate company in Taiwan showed that deep acting exhibited a higher consistency and agreement at the unit level than surface acting. Further, we found that unit LMX was positively related to unit employee deep acting, and that LMX differentiation moderated the effect of unit LMX on surface acting in such a way that the relationship was more negative when LMX differentiation was high. In addition, unit surface acting was negatively related to supervisor-rated employee customer-oriented behavior and positively related to employee somatic symptoms.