Supervisor-Directed Emotional Labor as Upward Influence: An Emotions-as-Social-Information Perspective

Deng, H.; Walter, F.; Guan, Y.

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.

Citation

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

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 18, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jan 18, 2020
• Publication Date: May 31, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jan 26, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 16, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Organizational Behavior
• Print ISSN: 0894-3796
• Electronic ISSN: 1099-1379
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 384-402
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2424
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1278148