Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Pages: 384-402

Journal: Journal of Organizational Behavior

Volume number: 41

Issue number: 4

ISSN: 0894-3796

eISSN: 1099-1379

Open access status: Green

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2424

Publisher: Wiley

Abstract: 
To access organizational resources, subordinates often strive to influence supervisors' impressions. Moreover, subordinates' interactions with supervisors are known to be ripe with emotions. Nevertheless, research on upward impression management has rarely examined how subordinates' emotion regulation in supervisor interactions may shape their tangible outcomes. The present study introduces subordinates' emotional labor toward supervisors as a novel means of upward influence. Building on the emotions-as-social-information model, we propose that supervisor-directed emotional labor indirectly relates with supervisory reward recommendations by shaping supervisors' liking and perceived competence of subordinates. Moreover, we cast supervisors' epistemic motivation as a boundary condition for these indirect relations. We tested these notions using time-lagged data from 377 subordinates and 91 supervisors. When supervisors' epistemic motivation was higher (but not lower), (1) supervisor-directed surface acting related negatively with supervisors' liking and perceived competence of subordinates and (2) supervisor-directed deep acting related positively with supervisors' liking of subordinates. Liking and perceived competence, in turn, related positively with supervisors' willingness to recommend subordinates for organizational rewards. These findings highlight supervisor-directed emotional labor as an upward impression management strategy with both beneficial (deep acting) and detrimental (surface acting) implications, and they illustrate important mechanisms and a key contingency factor for these consequences.

Harvard Citation style: Deng, H., Walter, F. and Guan, Y. (2020) Supervisor-Directed Emotional Labor as Upward Influence: An Emotions-as-Social-Information Perspective, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 41(4), pp. 384-402. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2424

APA Citation style: Deng, H., Walter, F., & Guan, Y. (2020). Supervisor-Directed Emotional Labor as Upward Influence: An Emotions-as-Social-Information Perspective. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 41(4), 384-402. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2424