The Effect of Organizational Identification on Emotional Labor: A Study in the Indian Pharmaceutical Sector

Abstract

Organizations depend on customers for their survival and growth. With increased importance of customers, organizational focus has expanded from the traditional economic rationale associated with the product (service) to more intangible dimensions of customer interaction. In fact, the manner in which employees interact with customers including the emotions they display during customer interactions influence customers’ perception of the organization and the quality of its product, customers’ affect, customer-employee rapport, and customers’ willingness to pass positive comments to others. Broadly speaking, employees’ display of organizationally desired emotions during customer interactions is called emotional labor. Extant literature claims that employees display emotions as a job requirement for economic remunerations. However, increasingly it is felt that apart from remuneration, organizations confer identity to their employees and employees associate themselves with organizations to reduce their subjective uncertainty (Hogg & Terry, 2000) and to fulfill the need for belonging, prestige, and attractiveness (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). The degree to which employees define themselves as members of the organization is called organizational identification. Increasingly organizational identification is used in the literature as an indirect way to influence employees’ behavior. Surprisingly, the literature is silent on the influence of organizational identification on employees’ emotional labor. The present study tries to fill this gap in literature. The study also explores the effect of the antecedents of organizational identification (namely perceived external prestige and perceived organizational support) on employees’ performance of emotional labor. Though studies have shown the importance of perceived external prestige and perceived organizational support in organizational context, their effect on emotional labor is still unexplored. Apart from their direct effect, the present study investigates the combined effect of perceived external prestige and perceived organizational support on employees’ performance of emotional labor. This study may help organizations in exploring the ways to influence employees’ organizational identification and their consequent emotional labor. Researchers agree that the consequence of emotional labor may vary from emotional exhaustion to emotional well-being. The present study explores the effect of emotional labor on employees’ emotional exhaustion and emotional well-being. Further it explores the mediation effect of emotional labor in explaining the linkage between organizational identification and its above consequences.

Medical representatives (MRs) in Indian pharmaceutical industry were selected as the respondents to test the above relationships. It is recognized that MRs’ efforts create difference in the prescription decisions of doctors. Cross-sectional data were collected by personally administering the questionnaire to 547 MRs in Ahmedabad city in India. As predicted organizational identification was found to be positively related to emotional labor and found to mediate the effect of perceived external prestige on emotional labor. The study also explores the interaction of perceived organizational support, organizational identification, and perceived external prestige on employees’ emotional labor, emotional exhaustion, and emotional well-being. The study investigates a relationship which has received scant attention in literature and first of its kind to study emotional labor in Indian context. Organizational identification is found to be an important concept which not only reduces the negative effect of emotional labor but also enhances employees’ emotional well-being.