Abstract:

In the process of service delivery, employees are expected to manage their feelings in order to ensure customer satisfaction. In the framework of this expectation, employees may be forced to suppress the negative emotions they feel or to show the emotions they demand from themselves instead of the emotions they feel. Workers’ efforts in this process are expressed as emotional work. However, employees may not always control their emotional work, as they are requested from themselves. In this case, employees may experience disconnection between their inner feelings and the feelings they show. According to the theory of self-conflict, this incoherence leads to negative consequences for the employee, such as discomfort, guilt. One of the negative consequences may be extinction. In the field, there are studies that investigate the impact of emotional work on extinction. But it has been shown that differentiated results have been achieved in relation to the direction and size of the relationship between emotional exhaustion and emotional work, one of the dimensions of exhaustion. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to explore the impact of emotional work on emotional extinction. For this purpose, data were collected through the survey method from healthcare professionals who are in intense interaction with customers. According to the research results, surface behavior from the dimensions of emotional work increases emotional extinction, while deep behavior reduces emotional extinction. It is therefore understood that the levels of emotional exhaustion of employees can be reduced depending on the effective management of emotional work. In order for employees to be able to manage their emotional work successfully, efforts to internalize organizational values and increase the perception of organizational support may be beneficial. Thus, employees can truly feel the feelings they ask for from themselves.

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