Can I Smile with Spirit? A Process Model associating Workplace Spirituality and Emotional Labor

Workplace spirituality (WS) is a framework of organizational values embedded in the culture of the organization that promotes employees to experience a sense of meaningfulness at work, sense of connection with coworkers, congruence of organizational values with theirs’ and experience transcendence through their work. The current paper presents WS as an organizational intervention to manage the problem of emotional labor (EL) and its dysfunctional consequences among the service employees. The main thesis of the study is that WS enables service employees to appraise EL as a challenge stressor rather than a hindrance stressor. The positive appraisal of EL as a challenge stressor will enable employees to manage the negative consequences of EL. Accordingly, we found WS was related to resilience, which facilitated challenge appraisal of EL. Further, challenge appraisal of EL was positively related to the use of deep acting to manage EL. Deep-acting was negatively associated with burnout, while surface acting wa...