The Effect of Emotional Labor on Work Alienation: A Study at Hotel Businesses

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to determine the levels of emotional labor and work alienation of hotel employees and to detect the causal relationship between these two concepts. For this purpose, a field research was conducted on employees of fivestar hotel businesses operating within Antalya Region. The study is limited to frontdesk, food-beverage and marketing-public relations departments at which emotional labor is more intensely exhibited. According to the results, while the level of deepacting in the context of emotional labor is high, the levels of superficial -acting and the naturally-felt emotions are moderate and relatively low, respectively. Work alienation was also determined as moderate. According to the results of the correlation analysis, it was found that work alienation had a moderate adverse relationship with deep-acting and naturally-felt emotions and a moderate but positive relationship with the superficial emotions. As a result of multiple regression analysis, approximately 50% of work alienation was predicted by emotional labor dimensions.