Effects of external prestige on emotional labor: mediation by organizational identification and moderation by perceived organizational support

Purpose: With the shift from manufacturing to services economies, the need of customer management has increased. The shift has also increased the role of frontline employees in managing their emotions, as they may directly influence customers' responses towards organisations' products and services. Based on this premise, this study values emotional labour and role of external prestige in predicting it. Furthermore, it also entails the investigation of organisational identification as mediator and perceived organisational support as moderator. Methodology/Design: This study is aimed at investigating the emotional labour and its explanatory mechanism, data was collected from 314 services employees through structured questionnaire. Sample was selected based on both random and referral sampling techniques, through questionnaire. Findings: Results empirically prove that external prestige of organisation influences employees' emotional responses, while organisational identification partially mediates the relation. And, perceptions of organisational support, influences the strength of relation between external prestige and organisational identification.