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Emotion Regulation Responsibilities and Psychological Well-being:

Effects of Emotional Labor on HR Managers and Organizations

Matthieu Wargnier

Executive Master Thesis

INSEAD

January 2014

Emotion Regulation Responsibilities and Psychological Well-being


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Abstract

The concept of emotional labor – the regulation of feelings and expressions for organizational

purposes – has shown exponential attention since its naming by sociologist Arlie Russel

Hochschild in 1983. However, most of the studies on this subject focus on employees on non-

professional jobs in the service sector. Over the same 30 years, following the realization that

competitive advantage could be seized and sustained through the wise utilization of human

resources, the HR profession has emerged as a strategic partner and is more and more

expected, beyond its original “people care” role, to regulate others’ feelings, as a change and

culture champion or supporting managers who lack the skills, energy or time to perform

emotion management. So far the impact of these emerging emotional responsibilities on the

psychological well-being of HR professionals has not been explored. This study examines the

effects of the full human resources emotional labor on HR Managers and organizations.

Results from the analysis of semi-structured interviews of HR Managers in large corporations

confirmed the transferability of several findings made on other professions. It was in

particular established that emotional labor was a key constituent of current HR Management

and that its impact on the psychological well-being and performance of the HR manager was

correlated to several individual differences and contextual factors. Further, practical

suggestions are proposed to increase the effectiveness of HR emotional labor in organizations

and reduce its psychological impact on HR Managers.

Keywords:

Emotional Labor, Interpersonal Emotional Regulation, Human Resource Manager, Well-

being, Dissonance, Change Management, Toxin Handler, Authenticity, Personality Traits,

Social Support



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Introduction:

The focus and context of human resources management, both in its practice within

organizations and in its study within academia, have undergone major development in the past

30 years (Schuler & Jackson, 2007). The successive HR evolutions to business partnership

(Ulrich, 1998) and human capital management (Ulrich, Younger, Brockbank, & Ulrich, 2013)

have deeply modified the responsibilities and required competencies of the HR profession. A

large part of these emerging requirements are extending the emotion regulation activities of

HR managers beyond their historical “caring for the people” key contribution : change and

culture management, employee engagement and support to leaders who lack the skills, energy

or time to perform emotion management with their teams.

Recent studies (Kulik, Cregan, Metz, & Brown, 2009) have leveraged the work of Frost

(2003) on “toxin handling”, i.e. the managerial activities associated with helping

organizational members cope with difficult, volatile emotions in the workplace, to start

exploring the psychological impact of HR emotion management at work while “caring for the

people”.

However, no work has so far captured that the extension of the emotional requirements on HR

managers made the profession move further to a true context of emotional labor. This concept

was described by Hochschild (1983) as the regulation of feelings and expressions for

organizational purposes and its psychological impacts have been well documented, albeit

mostly for non-professional jobs in the service sector. Emotional labor, as opposed to emotion

management at work, occurs “when emotion regulation is performed in response to job-based

emotional requirements in order to produce emotion towards – and to evoke emotion from –

another person to achieve organizational goals” (Grandey, Diefendorff, & Rupp, 2013).



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This study therefore takes a unique approach in that it explores the current human resources

management job requirements through the emotional labor lenses to identify how they impact

the HR manager and the organization in terms of well-being and performance. As

organizations are striving to make the HR function leaner and more ‘strategic’ (Francis &

Keegan, 2006) and as their much needed strategic agility appears increasingly related to

emotion management (Huy, 2011), the exploration of HR emotional labor is critical to

maintain the well-being and performance of HR managers despite the changes in job

requirements and therefore to ensure, through transformation and employee engagement, the

realization of organizational goals.

In this study the literature on emotional labor (EL) will be reviewed through the main lines of

research to propose an integrated view. A specific attention will be given to the transposition

of EL beyond non-professional service jobs, to its impact on well-being, and to its relation

with individual differences.

Findings from the analysis of semi-structured interviews of HR Managers in large

corporations will be discussed with respect to the extent to which emotional labor is actually

experienced by HR managers and in what way contextual and individual factors affect the

psychological impact and effectiveness of HR emotional labor. Coping strategies by HR

managers and social support by their managers will be examined. The impact of emotional

labor on the feeling of authenticity by HR managers and organization members will be

discussed.

Finally, implications of these findings will be suggested and areas for future research

identified. It is proposed that the impact of emotional labor on HR managers can be reduced

through the integration of personality traits in selection and development of HR managers, if



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specific social support measures are put in place, if the emotional requirements are formalized

or if HR managers are trained to antecedent based emotion regulations and relaxation.

Research aims and objectives:

This study aims to confirm the existence of emotional labor in the role of modern HR

managers, to explore how it is experienced by the HR managers themselves and to identify

the main factors that influence the effectiveness and psychological impact of HR emotional

labor. This will allow us to draw practical recommendations for HR managers and their line

managers with regards to the selection, development, support and training of HR managers.

Literature Review:

Emotional Labor

Three decades ago, sociologist Arlie Russel Hochschild published a seminal and

groundbreaking book: The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feelings (1983). In

this book she was proposing that the growth of the service sector and the increased attention

to interpersonal job demands gave birth to a new type of occupation called “emotional labor”,

a parallel concept to cognitive labor or physical labor. The term “labor” allowed to

differentiate emotional labor (i.e. managing feelings and expressions in exchange for a wage)

from emotion management that could be performed for personal use and potentially in a

private context.

Three main perspectives have been used to study EL (Grandey, Diefendorff, & Rupp, 2013):



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- The original view of Hochschild, seeing EL as occupational requirements, identifying

EL jobs that require managing feelings and expressions (display rules) in exchange for

a wage, by opposition to emotion work done in private for personal motives. It shows

EL to be functional for the organization but dysfunctional for the employee.

- Seeing EL as emotional displays (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987) (active or effortless

expression of work role-specified emotions) that can be congruent or incongruent with

feelings and can be authentic or inauthentic. It shows EL as functional for organization

and employee, unless it is highly effortful and inauthentic.

- More recently, seeing EL as as intrapsychic processes (Morris & Feldman, 1997)

(Grandey, 2000) to effortfully manage one’s feelings (deep acting) or expressions

(surface acting) when interacting with others at work. It shows EL as functional for

organization and employee in the case of deep acting but dysfunctional in the case of

surface acting, when there is a tension (emotional dissonance) between feelings and

expressions.

Proposed integrative model

For the purpose of this study, we propose to integrate these views in the following model

(Chart 1), building on previous attempts (Diefendorff & Gosserand, 2003) (Holman,

Martinez-Iñigo, & Totterdell, 2011) (Grandey, Diefendorff, & Rupp, Bringing Emotional

Labor into Focus, 2013).

First, display rules (or emotion requirements) are set, implicitly or in a formalized way, by the

organization for a given job. The emotions that are required to be displayed can be either

integrative (such as love, loyalty and pride that “bind groups together”), differentiating (such

as fear, anger or contempt that “cause group differences”) or masking (such as emotional

neutrality and restraint) (Wharton & Erickson, 1993).



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Chart 1: Proposed integrative Emotional Labor Model

Employees are then constantly comparing their feelings with the display rules associated with

their job. In case of congruence, they can release a genuine expression of their feelings or

automatically regulated emotions and are said to be in emotional harmony (Ashforth &

Humphrey, 1993).

Otherwise, there is an emotion-rule dissonance (Holman, Martinez-Iñigo, & Totterdell, 2011)

that can result in either the employee not complying with the display rules, putting oneself in

emotional deviance which is dysfunctional for both the organization and the individual.

Complying with the display rules creates an emotion-display dissonance (Grandey,

Diefendorff, & Rupp, 2013) that can be solved through:

- Antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategies also called deep acting to modify

feelings before they are fully present, through cognitive reappraisal of the event that



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generated the feeling or through refocusing one’s attention. These strategies are

functional for the organization and the employee.

- Response-focused emotion regulation also called surface acting to suppress, amplify or

fake the observable expression while fully keeping the original feeling internally. Such

regulation is dysfunctional for the employee and often for the organization due to its

perceivable inauthenticity.

The service sector has been the primary focus of EL research, mainly around professions such

as flight attendants, health care providers, teachers, paralegal or call center workers (Erickson

& Ritter, 2001). However, more recent work consider EL to be a central component to other

jobs requiring interpersonal contact (Diefendorff, Richard, & Croyle, 2006) and leadership

roles (Humphrey, Pollack, & Hawver, 2008).

Human Resources

Although some recent research (Kulik, Cregan, Metz, & Brown, 2009) has started

investigating the emotion regulation activities of HR managers in their traditional “toxin

handler” role (helping organizational members cope with difficult, volatile emotions in the

workplace) (Frost & Robinson, 1999), the EL component of HR roles as not been studied yet

and literature only refers to HR as a factor to the EL of other organizational members. In

particular, the academic literature is silent on the potential psychological impact of the

successive extensions of the HR mandate to business partnership (Ulrich, 1998), human

capital management (Ulrich, Younger, Brockbank, & Ulrich, 2013) and the associated

emotion regulation requirements: change and culture management, employee engagement and

support to leaders who lack the skills, energy or time to perform emotion management with

their teams (Huy, 2011).



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Methodology:

Beyond the confirmation that EL is a key component of the HR Manager role, the main goal

of this study is to identify the individual and contextual factors that can affect the

effectiveness and psychological impact of HR EL and to propose theoretical and practical

implications for the HR profession. That interest led to a qualitative research methodology

being chosen and in particular to the use of the grounded theory approach which provides

“flexible, successive analytic strategies for constructing inductive theories from the data”

(Charmaz & Henwood, 2008) and are “particularly well-suited to developing theoretical

models from unstructured data” (Harper, 2008).

The basis was the collection, through recorded semi-structured interviews, of “grounded

events”, i.e. actual incidents that could potentially require emotional labor from HR

Managers. The incidents were then analyzed to reveal patterns.

Data Collection

Interviews were led following the critical incident technique (CIT), a set of procedures for

collecting direct observations of human behavior (Flanagan, 1954). Incidents can be “any

specifiable human activity sufficiently complete in itself to permit inferences and predictions

about a particular activity” (Silvester, 2008). In organizational and job analysis, CIT has been

used to collect role-related behavior information from role incumbents directly and from

managers of role incumbents.

Critical incidents were defined as any event, combination of events, or series of events,

between an HR Manager (the interviewee or one of his subordinates) and one or more

interlocutors, that caused the HR Manager to regulate his/her feelings and expressions for

organizational purposes.



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Interviews were performed either face to face or remotely through phone or video and audio

recorded with interviewee’s consent. The sample size was determined using a post hoc

method, considering that adequate coverage was achieved when the addition of critical

incidents to the sample was not adding critical behaviors anymore.

Flanagan suggests that “if full and precise details are given, it can usually be assumed that this

information is accurate. Vague reports suggest that the incident is not well remembered and

that some of the data may be incorrect.” Interviewees were therefore probed to provide details

and, when situations remained vague, the incidents were removed from the data collection.

Following the analysis of the main wave of interviews, personality traits appeared to be a

potential significant factor of the nature, effectiveness and impact of HR EL. Several studies

on other professions have established a relationship between Emotional Labor and some of

the Big Five personality traits, in relation with Emotional Intelligence (Chi, Grandey,

Diamond, & Royer Krimmel, 2011) (Joseph & Newman, 2010). All interviewees were

therefore asked to complete a web based Big Five personality trait inventory (Potter, 2009)

based on the works of UC Berkeley psychologist Oliver John (John & Srivastava, 1999).

Data Analysis

Following Glaser’s guidelines (Glaser, 2012), the coding of incidents and subsequent

grounded theory generation was made in an inductive way, progressing as the interviews were

performed and analyzed in four successive waves: informal discussions, first pilot interviews,

main series of interviews, verification interviews.

As the term “critical incident” can refer either to a complete story or to discrete behaviors

contained within a story, the first step was to delineate the unit of analysis. It was determined

that discrete behavior would better preserve the specificity of the data. Therefore, main



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incidents were, when applicable, coded into separate critical behaviors. For instance, when an

HR Manager was experiencing different emotional stages during a same meeting, each stage

was recorded as a separate incident. For each incident, four emotions were described: the one

required to be displayed by the HR Manager (“Required”), the one experienced by the HR

Manager (“Felt”), the one expressed by the HR Manager’s interlocutors (“Received”) and the

one actually expressed by the HR Manager (“Actual”).

In order to categorize the different incidents, the four previously mentioned emotions were

classified as per:

- their expected effect on groups, either integrative, differentiating or masking (Wharton

& Erickson, 1993)

- and their nature, based on Robert Plutchik's circumplex model (Chart 2). Plutchik’s

psycho-evolutionary theory of emotion is one of the most influential classification

Chart 2: Robert Plutchik's circumplex model

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Plutchik-wheel.svg



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approaches for general emotional responses. It considers that all emotions occur as

combinations, mixtures, or compounds of eight primary emotions: anger, fear,

sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy.

The emotional work performed by the HR Manager is then described as:

- the emotion-rule relation, either harmony or dissonance

- and the kind of emotional work performed by the HR Manager, as per the integrative

EL model proposed above : Genuine expression, auto regulated expression, antecedent

focused emotion regulation, response focused emotion regulation or emotional

deviance.

Finally, for each incident, the strategies used by the role incumbent to manage the situation

and/or to later recover from it, are captured.

Description of the Research Setting:

In order for interesting patterns to emerge from the data, following a grounded theory

approach, interviewees have been carefully identified and selected to have a wide variety of

experiences. For convenience, potential informants have been selected from my professional

network with the goal to interview generalist HR Managers whom have been expected to

perform significant emotion regulation (through change management, restructuring, heavy

industrial relations or working with dysfunctional leaders) and/or have shown signs of

potential psychological distress (burnout, excessive stress, refusal to comply or to continue as

HR) or visible emotional serenity and/or don’t have an HR boss to support them (remote jobs

or Chief HR Officer roles). Given my experience in large multinational corporations, all

potential informants had experience mostly in large organizations. This bias was actually

thought to be positive as large companies are the most likely to reflect the HR evolutions to



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business partnership (Ulrich, 1998) and human capital management (Ulrich, Younger,

Brockbank, & Ulrich, 2013) described above.

Potential interviewees were then categorized according to known information (experiences or

profiles) that could be predictors of a wide enough variety of experiences: showing strong

emotional stability or not, having showed signs of stress or burnout or not, having considered

or decided to leave the HR function or not, having worked previously in other functions or

not, having experienced intensive labor relations or not, having experienced restructuring or

not, having HR peers in the location or company or not, working in different industries, being

from different countries.

From this list, 21 potential informants were identified as covering a wide enough range of

profiles and were invited for interview. The first 15 of them to be available were actually

interviewed before the sample was considered adequate.

Pilot wave

The first two people to answer were invited for pilot interviews for the calibration of the

questions. Both were former colleagues and had been informally discussing work situations

before this study. Interviews respectively lasted 60 and 90 minutes and confirmed the

necessity of emotional labor in the HR Manager function and the existence of an impact on

the psychological well-being of the role incumbent. Ten critical incidents were described

during these two interviews. The interview notes and recordings were later analyzed with the

goal to codify the incidents. Due to a lack of details in the description of the situations, this

first classification would not have been possible without the information gathered before the

interviews and my knowledge of the described organizations. This realization led to a revised

interview structure for the second wave.



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Main wave

Building on the return of experience from the pilot wave, subsequent interviews consisted of

open-ended questions and individually adapted follow up questions. Participants were asked

to report “stories” (critical incidents) when they thought their role elicited them to manage the

level or nature of their emotional displays, whether they actually did it or not. The expected

elements of the story were:

- the emotional landscape of the organization and of the HR function in the organization

(what emotions were promoted, accepted or proscribed)

- the context for the role incumbent and in particular the stakes, antecedents and

availability for support

- the stakeholders

- the factual events

- the emotional displays of various stakeholders

- the felt emotions of the informant

- the impact on the informant and the strategies used to manage, mitigate or recover

from the incident.

- When not covered in the narratives, open ended questions were asked to clarify the

context of the situations and to include enough details.

Eleven HR managers were interviewed in this phase, for 45 to 90 minutes each, and 39

critical incidents were captured, coded and analyzed. The various levels of impact on the

psychological well-being of the incumbents and the diversity of the strategies used by

different people to manage, mitigate or recover from similar situations were an obvious

learning from this wave but could not immediately be linked to the critical incident categories

identified at that stage. As extraversion and emotional stability had been spontaneously



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discussed by participants, these personality traits appeared as promising factors but

interviewees were difficult to categorize accurately on such scales. Rather than guessing or

relying on auto-evaluation from interviewees, it was decided to ask all informants to take a

personality test inventory. For reason of scientific validity, convenience for the respondents

and free availability, a web based Big Five Personality Test (Potter, 2009) based on the work

of Oliver John (John & Srivastava, 1999) has been selected. The URL was sent to all

interviewees, asking them to return the test results by email.

All received answers were incorporated in the coding of the critical incidents for analysis.

Validation wave

To validate the findings of the first two waves, two more participants were interviewed and

ten critical incidents were captured.

Demographics of interviewees

All interviewees were from the HR function although three had previously worked in other

functions. All could be described as HR Managers although at different level : 3 held the top

HR role in large international corporations and, at the other end, two were professionals and

individual contributors. In terms of age, two interviewees were below 35 and five above 50

years old. Five were women and ten were males. Although most respondents had international

roles and experience, only one was not a French citizen and was German.

Out of fifteen interviewees, twelve accepted to communicate their Big Five test results. The

results are displayed below (Chart 3 and Table 1). Each full line represents the percentile

scores of one respondent on each one of the five personality dimensions: Openness to

Experience/Intellect (O), Conscientiousness (C), Extraversion (E), Agreeableness (A) and

Neuroticism (N). The red dotted line represent the median score of all respondents.



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Chart 3: Big Five Personality Traits of Interviewees

Table 1: Analysis of Big Five Personality profiles of interviewees

Three personality dimensions of the respondents significantly differ from the comparison

sample (general population):

- only 18% of the comparison sample have a lower Neuroticism score than the median

of the interviewees. Although the standard deviation is quite high (19,96 for an

average score of 23,42), only two respondents have a Neuroticism percentile above 50

and none have a percentile above 60. We can consider that there is a significant

prevalence of low neuroticism scores among the respondents compared to the general

population.

Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism

Median 35,0 66,0 56,0 50,0 18,0

Standard Deviation 23,4 23,1 26,5 23,0 19,6

Mean 40,8 62,8 57,8 51,8 23,4

Coefficient of variation 0,6 0,4 0,5 0,4 0,8



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- only 34% of the comparison sample have a higher Conscientiousness score than the

median of the interviewees. Only three respondents have a Conscientiousness

percentile below 50 but the standard deviation is too high (23,09 for an average of

62,75) to consider the high conscientiousness prevalence as significant.

- only 35% of the comparison sample have a lower Openness score than the median of

the interviewees. Only four respondents have a Openness percentile above 50 but the

standard deviation is too high (23,41 for an average of 40,75) to consider the low

openness prevalence as significant.

Specifications of critical incidents

Fifty nine critical incidents were recorded. They were categorized by type of main

interlocutor, i.e. who the interviewee is facing during the critical incident, and by type of

situation (Table 2):

- Crisis : facing life threat, accidents or death of employees

- Dismissal : managing the departure of employees through individual or collective

redundancy or dismissal

- Integrity : being confronted to divergent values or ethical dilemmas

- Interviews : face to face discussions with employees or candidates for any other

purpose than dismissal

- Labor relations : dealing with employee representatives, trade unions and authorities

- Communication : communication or retention of information and opinions



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Interlocutor /

Situation Crisis Dismissal Integrity

Labor

Relations Communication Interviews Total

Boss 3 2 2 7

Candidate 2 2

Coachee 2 2

Employee 3 12 1 7 1 24

Ext. stakeholder 1 1

Managers 2 2

Representatives 21 21

Total 3 15 3 22 11 5 59 Table 2: Number of narratives by type of interlocutor and type of situation

The settings of the stories are, due to the demographics of interviewees, quite balanced in

term of industry but with, in terms of country, a clear over representation of France (Table 3).

Country / Industry Construction High Tech Industrial Insurance Total

Algeria 1 1

France 1 19 22 4 46

Germany 4 4

Morocco 1 1

Sweden 1 1

Switzerland 1 4 5

USA 1 1

Total 3 23 29 4 59 Table 3: Distribution of narratives by country and industry

Data Gathering and Analysis

As the interviews were performed and analyzed, multiple dimensions progressively appeared

as promising for a better understanding of the emotion regulation strategies during these

situations. The contextual dimensions are:

- C1: Purpose of felt, required and actually displayed emotions : integrative,

differentiating or masking (Wharton & Erickson, 1993)

- C2: Nature of received (C2r), felt (C2f), required (C2q) and actually displayed (C2a)

emotions as per Robert Plutchik's circumplex model



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- C3: The kind of emotional response performed, in line with the proposed integrative

model above (Chart 1): genuine expression, auto-regulated expression, antecedent

focused emotion regulation, response focused emotional regulation or emotional

deviance

- C4: The type of interlocutor: boss, candidate, coachee, employee, external stakeholder,

managers or representatives

- C5: The type of situation: crisis, dismissal, integrity, labor relations, communication or

interviews

- C6: The estimated relative level of emotional intensity during the critical incident:

low, medium or high. This ranking was based on the description of the emotional

display of the interlocutor or of the emotional state of the interviewee, based on Robert

Plutchik's circumplex model. For instance, the emotional intensity was ranked as high

when the interviewee used words of the same level as in the center of the model such

as “rage”, “terror”, “admiration” or “grief” or when the interviewee directly described

the intensity level (e.g. “fear was everywhere, palpable” or “there was an extreme

tension in the room” or “he suddenly became purple and threw away the report across

the meeting room”).

- C7: The estimated relative level of impact of the critical incident on the emotional

well-being of the interviewee: low, medium or high. This classification was based on

either direct or indirect feedback. For instance, a situation was ranked with a high

impact when the interviewee directly stated the impact (e.g. “this situation deeply

impacted me and my colleagues”) or described consequences of the impact (e.g. “I

started to develop phobias” or “I could not concentrate for the rest of the day” or “For

the first time in many years, I completely lost my temper”) or was showing obvious

signs of agitation and stress when referring to the incident during the interview.



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- C8: The main HR competency put in practice or expected from the interviewee during

the critical incident, based on the Ulrich model (Ulrich, Younger, Brockbank, &

Ulrich, 2013): capability builder, change champion , credible activist, HR innovator

and integrator or strategic positioner.

- C9: The availability or not of another HR person in the workplace, either a peer or

above in the hierarchy of the corporation but excluding subordinates.

The individual dimensions are:

- I1: The type of strategy to deal with the emotional situations in general: either

“congruence”, ie. when respondents were seeking a full alignment between the

opinions and emotions of their personal and professional selves, or “separation” when

respondents were seeking to dissociate the emotions and opinions of their personal

selves from their professional ones. This classification was based on direct statements

(e.g. “I am someone else when I am at work” or “There is no such thing as an HRD

me or a personal me, there are no boundaries”) or indirect indications (“I tend to

protect my family and friends from anything that is work related” or “although it is not

always appropriate, it is usual that my political opinions are known at work”).

- I2: The Big Five personality profile of the interviewees and especially Agreeableness

(I2a) and Neuroticism (I2n)

- I3: The experience of the interviewee across companies and/or functions

- I4: The demographics of the interviewees: age (I4a) and gender (I4b).

The categorization of all incidents on each one of these dimensions was made based on the

careful analysis of the interviews and of the biographies of the interviewees. The results were

then consolidated in a database in order to perform crossed analysis of all parameters.



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Several interesting patterns emerged around five main angles : the interlocutors faced, the

type of situations, the HR dimension at stake as per the Ulrich model, the personality traits of

the HRM and finally the Emotion Regulation strategy used.

Analysis by interlocutor

As shown above, Employees and Representatives are the two most recurring interlocutors

(C4) in the narratives, followed by bosses. It is also interesting to note that these three

categories of interlocutors are also the only ones associated to situations with high Intensity

(C6) or high Impact (C7), as shown below (Table 4 and Table 5). Unsurprisingly, the results

indicate that although interactions with representatives are the most often involving intense

emotions, interactions with bosses are the ones most often highly impactful: more than half of

the highly intense situations are involving representatives but “only” one third of them have a

high impact while more than 70% of narratives with bosses resulted in a high impact.

Interlocutor / Intensity High Medium Low Total

Boss 4 1 2 7

Candidate 2 2

Coachee 1 1 2

Employee 10 7 7 24

External stakeholder 1 1

Managers 1 1 2

Representatives 13 5 3 21

Total 27 15 17 59 Table 4: Distribution of narratives by interlocutor type and intensity level



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Interlocutor / Impact High Medium Low Total

Boss 5 2 7

Candidate 2 2

Coachee 2 2

Employee 5 12 7 24

External stakeholder 1 1

Managers 1 1 2

Representatives 7 7 7 21

Total 17 20 22 59 Table 5: Distribution of narratives by interlocutor type and impact level

Analysis by Situations

Given the frequent occurrence of Representatives in the narratives, Labor Relations is the

main type of highly intense and highly impactful situation (C5), followed by Dismissals.

Communication situations, although representing more than 18% of the situations, are never

described as highly intense or having a high impact (Table 6 and Table 7).

Situation / Intensity High Medium Low Total

Communication 3 8 11

Crisis 3 3

Dismissal 8 6 1 15

Integrity 2 1 3

Interviews 1 1 3 5

Labor Relations 13 5 4 22

Total 27 15 17 59 Table 6: Distribution of narratives by situation type and intensity level

Situation / Impact

High Medium Low Total

Communication 6 5 11

Crisis 2 1 3

Dismissal 5 7 3 15

Integrity 2 1 3

Interviews 1 4 5

Labor Relations 7 7 8 22

Total 17 20 22 59 Table 7: Distribution of narratives by situation type and impact level



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For a deeper understanding of the situations, it is interesting to identify the nature of the

emotions (C2) involved in each one of the four emotional components of a narrative: the

emotion received from the interlocutor (C2r), the one required (C2q) from an HRM (e.g. the

“rule”), the one spontaneously felt (C2f) by the HRM as a person and finally the one actually

displayed (C2a) by the HRM.

Interlocutor

Emotion /

Situation Communication Crisis Dismissal Integrity Interviews

Labor

Relations Total

Aggressiveness 1 2 1 15 19

Disapproval 3 2 2 7

Interest 3 2 2 7

Fear 1 5 6

Apprehension 2 1 3

Sadness 2 1 3

Optimism 1 1 2

Anger 1 1 2

Vigilance 2 2

Acceptance 1 1 2

Neutrality 1 1 2

Surprise 1 1

Disgust 1 1

Annoyance 1 1

Joy 1 1

Total 11 3 15 3 5 22 59 Table 8: Distribution of narratives by received emotion and situation

The most often received emotion (C2r) is by far aggressiveness and in close to 80% of the

cases it comes in Labor Relations situations (Table 8). Given the wide range of seniority and

industries, this could come as a surprise if such a large portion of the narratives would not

have taken place in France where Labor Relations is marked by a culture of class conflict

(Morvan, 2013) and relative impunity from courts and companies in case of verbal or physical

abuse towards management in general and HR management in particular (Canonne, 2014).

Recently, current of former French HR executives have started disclosing the personal impact

of these situations on them (Vergne, 2013) (Lhoumeau, 2013) (Grenet, 2011). Beyond



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aggressiveness in labor relations, other recurrently received emotions are fear in cases of

dismissal, disapproval for what has to be communicated and interest for what cannot be

communicated.

A joint analysis of required (Table 9) and felt (Table 10) emotions by situations shows the

most frequent emotional dissonance experienced by HRMs. For instance, in Communication

situations, the most frequent dissonance is when HRMs are expected to display optimism, for

instance about the company strategy but feel disapproval. In cases of dismissal, the most

frequent dissonance is when the required emotion is acceptance, for instance of the rationale

of the termination, while the felt emotion is remorse. In Labor Relations situations, more than

half of narratives reported feelings of anger, contempt or fear while neutrality and restraint

was required.

Despite significant differences by type of situation for received, required and felt emotions, it

is interesting to note that more than half of the actually displayed (C2a) emotions are

Neutrality, Restraint or Acceptance (Table 11). This is true in general but also for each one of

the main types of situations: communication, dismissal and labor relations. It should also be

noted that anger is the fifth most frequently displayed emotion but should not be interpreted as

deviance as, in 75% of the cases, it is in a labor relations context and in line with the expected

behavior.



25

Required

Emotion /


Labor

Relations Total

Acceptance 6 1 3 10

Optimism 6 1 1 8

Restraint 3 1 4 8

Neutrality 2 5 7

Submission 1 3 2 6

Interest 1 3 2 6

Trust 2 1 3

Anger 3 3

Calm 1 2 3

Annoyance 1 1 2

Joy 1 1

Sadness 1 1

Serenity 1 1

Total 11 3 15 3 5 22 59 Table 9: Distribution of narratives by required emotion and situation

Felt Emotion

/ Situation

Communication Crisis Dismissal Integrity Interviews

Labor

Relations Total

Disapproval 6 4 3 2 15

Anger 1 7 8

Remorse 6 6

Contempt 1 4 5

Fear 1 3 4

Annoyance 1 1 1 3

Apprehension 1 2 3

Trust 2 1 3

Interest 1 1 2

Boredom 1 1 2

Disgust 1 1 2

Sadness 1 1

Joy 1 1

Serenity 1 1

Optimism 1 1

Disaproval 1 1

Distraction 1 1

Total 11 3 15 3 5 22 59 Table 10: Distribution of narratives by felt emotion and situation



26

Displayed

Emotion /


Labor

Relations Total

Neutrality 3 4 2 6 15

Restraint 4 1 5 10

Acceptance 5 1 1 7

Interest 1 2 1 1 5

Anger 4 4

Trust 3 1 4

Submission 1 1 1 3

Annoyance 1 1 1 3

Calm 1 2 3

Disapproval 1 1 2

Serenity 1 1

Joy 1 1

Annnoyance 1 1

Total 11 3 15 3 5 22 59 Table 11: Distribution of narratives by displayed emotion and situation

Analysis based on with Ulrich’s HR competency model

Classifying the narratives according to the main required competency domain (C8) and the

type of situation (C5) shows several associations (Table 12):

- Almost all Labor Relations situations are linked to the Change Champion competency

domain. This counter intuitive result is a strong indication of the labor relations

dynamics in France where the legal requirement to consult representatives for any

significant change of strategy, organization, method or tool has led to opposition to

change being often used by representatives to gain negotiation power, popularity or

status (Morvan, 2013).

- All Dismissal situations are linked to the Credible Activist competency domain. Ulrich

defines HR credibility as a combined result of execution, trust and reliability and

expects an activist to show consistent integrity (Ulrich, Younger, Brockbank, &

Ulrich, 2013). Many emotional dissonance narratives for dismissals refer to a



27

perceived disconnect between credibility requirements (e.g. the commitment or

obligation to execute dismissals efficiently) and activist role (e.g. showing respect,

care and attention to employees or refusing unfair dismissals).

- Communication situations are linked to three competency domains: Credible Activist,

Change Champion and HR Innovator and Integrator. This reflects the wide variety of

information and opinions HR Managers are expected to push throughout the

workforce: values, strategy, HR practices, etc. Most interviewees have underlined that

the HR Manager, when in a generalist role, always need to control his communication,

even during moments that seem informal as all other people in the workplace are

employees and therefore potential subjects for HR activities.

Ulrich

Competency

/ Situation


Labor

Relations Total

Capability

Builder 2 2

Change

Champion 3 21 24

Credible

Activist 5 1 15 3 3 27

HR

Innovator

and

Integrator 3 2 5

Strategic

Positioner 1 1

Total 11 3 15 3 5 22 59 Table 12: Distribution of narratives by HR Competency and Situation

As Dismissals and Labor Relations narratives are the ones with the highest intensity and

impact, the associated Credible Activist and Change Champion competency domains are the

ones involved in high intensity (C6) or high impact (C7) situations (Table 13 and Table 14).



28

Ulrich Competency /

Intensity High Medium Low Total

Capability Builder 1 1 2

Change Champion 13 6 5 24

Credible Activist 12 9 6 27

HR Innovator and Integrator 2 1 2 5

Strategic Positioner 1 1

Total 27 17 15 59 Table 13: Distribution of narratives by HR competency and intensity

Ulrich Competency / Impact

High Medium Low Total

Capability Builder 2 2

Change Champion 7 9 8 24

Credible Activist 9 9 9 27

HR Innovator and Integrator 1 2 2 5

Strategic Positioner 1 1

Total 17 20 22 59 Table 14: Distribution of narratives by HR competency and impact

Analysis by personality traits

Given the significant prevalence of low neuroticism scores among the interviewees and the

impact of this personality trait on emotional stress (Schneider, 2004), we tried to verify its

correlation to the impact of emotional labor on the psychological well-being of the HR

manager. In order to do so, interviews were scanned to detect all references to either burn out

syndromes, psychological distress or situations where the HRM felt he had to leave his job,

company or the HR function, in relation to the emotional narratives. Crossing this analysis

with previously known situations allowed to list “impacted” HRMs, i.e. HRMs who, at any

point in their career, had their psychological well-being damaged or seriously threatened. We

called this dimension “I5”. This list was then crossed with the Neuroticism (I2n) score,

expressed both in absolute terms versus the general population (i.e. compared to the score of

50) and in relative terms versus the group of interviewees (i.e. compared to the median score

of the sample, 18).



29

Although the numbers are too small to draw final conclusions, it is striking to see that the two

interviewees having a high neuroticism score in absolute terms have been “impacted” and that

out of the ten having a low neuroticism (I2n) score in absolute terms, nine have not been

“impacted” (I5) (Table 15). Given the very low median, the results in relative terms are less

polarized but still in the same direction: the proportion of “impacted” interviews is doubled

when the neuroticism score is high in relative terms.

This is confirmed by a positive correlation coefficient of 0,501 (Chart 4).

Neuroticism / Impacted Yes No Total

Absolute : High 2 2

Relative : High 2 2

Absolute : Low 1 9 10

Relative : High 4 4

Relative : Low 1 5 6

Total 3 9 12 Table 15: Distribution of interviewees by neuroticism score and past well-being impact

Chart 4: Distribution of neuroticism scores by past well-being impact

As per a recent study (Diefendorff, Croyle, & Gosserand, The dimensionality and antecedents

of emotional labor strategies, 2005), Agreeableness (I2a) is, among the Big Five personality

traits, the only disposition to be uniquely related to all three emotional labor strategies (C3):

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 1,2

Ne

uro

tici

sm S

core

Impacted : 0=No, 1=Yes



30

genuine expression, antecedent focused emotion regulation and response focused emotion

regulation. We could not replicate these results with significant correlation levels, although

the direction of the correlation is the same: agreeableness is slightly positively correlated to

antecedent based emotion regulation (Pearson’s r = +0.06) and slightly negatively correlated

to response focused emotion regulation (r = -0.14). The weakness of the correlation could

well be explained by the fact that rather than assessing general behavior of participants we

were focusing on specific critical incidents identified by the interviewees when they were

asked to think about different kinds of situations. This could have very well led them to

artificially re-balance their emotion regulation strategies despite their natural disposition to

one approach.

In order to assess the impact of Agreeableness on HRM’s emotional labor strategies, a crossed

analysis was made with the overall congruence/separation strategy (I1) of interviewees,

showing a positive correlation of agreeableness to congruence (r = +0.42). This result would

tend to confirm that individuals who tend to value highly positive interpersonal relations are

more likely to seek authenticity through the unity of their professional and personal opinions.

As several respondents had justified their use of separation rather congruence by a need to

protect themselves, a first hypothesis was that separation could be negatively correlated to

past well-being impact (I5). Such correlation could not be verified on our sample.

However, the existence of a past well-being impact seems to significantly change the

agreeableness to congruence correlation. For interviewees not having suffered from past well-

being impact (I5), the agreeableness (I2a) to congruence (I1) correlation coefficient (r =

+0.77) is 80% higher than for the whole sample (Chart 5). This confirms that individuals who

tend to value highly positive interpersonal relations are likely to seek authenticity through the

unity of their professional and personal opinions but also indicates that they may adapt their



31

behavior, consciously or not, to more separation when they have been impacted in their

psychological well-being.

Chart 5: Agreeableness score by congruence and past well-being impact

Analysis by kind of emotional response

The kind of emotion regulation (C3) performed differs depending on the situations (C5). As

interviewees were asked to describe emotion regulation situations, it is not surprising that

most critical incidents show emotional dissonance rather than emotional harmony. In

Communication, Crisis and Interviews, the most frequent approaches have been response

focused while Dismissal was mostly handled through antecedent focused ER. The most

frequent situation, Labor Relations, was handled in both ways (Table 15).

In the same way that we studied, at the person level, the correlation between neuroticism and

past impact on the well-being, the relation at the critical incident level between the kind of

emotion regulation and the impact of the event on the HRM is interesting.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1 2

Agr

ee

able

ne

ss

Congruence / Separation

Not impacted

Impacted



32

Emotion

regulation /

Situation


Labor

Relations Total

Dissonance 10 2 15 3 4 21 55

Antecedent

focused ER 9 1 8 18

Emotional

Deviance 2 1 1 4

Emotional

Deviance

(Partial) 2 2

Response

focused ER 8 2 4 1 4 12 31

Harmony 1 1 1 1 4

Auto

regulated

expression 1 1 1 3

Genuine

Expression 1 1

Total 11 3 15 3 5 22 59 Table 15: Distribution of Narratives by kind of emotional response and situation

A first raw analysis shows that more than 55% of antecedent based emotion regulation

situations ended up with a medium impact while 48% of response focused emotion regulation

did the same. This could seem to indicate that response focused emotion regulation is more

effective in mitigating the impact of emotional events, which would be quite contradictory

with previous studies. The reason for that discrepancy probably is that events in our sample

are not comparable because of their very different intensity.

We therefore combined the intensity variable and the impact variable to calculate a third

variable called “Response Effect” (C10) with three potential values : “neutral” if intensity and

impact are equal, “effective” if intensity is higher than impact and “worsening” if intensity is

lower than impact. The percentage of events with an “effective” outcome gives the efficiency

level of each kind of emotion regulation. On the 59 studied situations, antecedent focused

emotion regulation has an efficiency level of 61%, auto regulated expression 33% and



33

response focused emotion regulation 13% (Table 16). Emotional deviance and genuine

expression show efficiency of 0% but on too small a number of events to draw conclusions.

Response / Response Effect Effective Neutral Worsening Total

Antecedent focused ER 11 7 18

Response focused ER 4 24 3 31

Auto regulated expression 1 2 3

Emotional Deviance 3 1 4

Emotional Deviance (Partial) 2 2

Genuine Expression 1 1

Total 16 39 4 59 Table 16: Distribution of narratives by kind of response and response effect

Findings and Discussion

The first result of the study is a confirmation that, although the HR function has never been

studied by Emotional Labor literature, modern HR Managers in large corporations do

experience emotional labor. The characteristics and effects of emotional labor for HR

managers are comparable to what has been described for other occupations with a few

specificities.

HR specific contextual EL factors:

Three main contextual factors differentiate HR EL. First, results show that HR Managers are

exposed to intense and impactful emotional situations not only with their bosses like any

worker does but also with employee representatives and with employees not seen as

colleagues but as potential HR topics. The climate of labor relations in France and the

increasing expectations from, and of, employees are the most often quoted explanations for

the high number of intense and impactful situations with these interlocutors.



34

A second contextual factor is the “loneliness” or isolation of the HR Manager. In 41 of the 59

analyzed narratives, the HR Manager had no HR colleague next to him/her, other than

subordinates. This situation, obvious for the Chief HR Officer of a company, also happens

often when HR Managers are the highest HR person of the company in a site, country, region

or division. While any other function can find relief and support from any colleague, most

interviewees expressed that there was not a single person they could freely talk to in their

workplace. The main quoted reasons for this inability to get support from co-workers because

of speech control are the confidentiality of the topics they worked on, the necessity to keep

some distance with colleagues who could at any moment become “HR topics” and the

ambivalent “Business Partner” relation with the General Manager. As explained below, peer

support is a key mitigation and recovery strategy for HR EL. This is consistent with the fact

that, in our sample, narratives ended-up with a high impact (C7) in 32% of the cases when no

HR colleague was available and in 22% of the cases when HR colleagues were available.

A third contextual factor is related to the specific HR situations (C5). Based on Ulrich’s

competency model (Ulrich, Younger, Brockbank, & Ulrich, 2013) it could be anticipated that

the Change Champion competency would be significantly associated to EL situations. Results

for the sample actually show that the two most frequent, intense and impactful EL situations

are Labor Relations and Dismissal, respectively associated to the Change Champion and

Credible Activist competency domains. Although Labor Relations and Dismissals are

traditional HR activities, they could very well be more emotionally demanding nowadays than

a few years ago, especially in France. HR Managers are increasingly caught in between, on

one side, a business need for an increased pace of change and, on the other side, employee

representatives who learnt how to use obstruction to change as a negotiation weapon. Also, in

the French context of high unemployment rate, legal uncertainty, exponential harassment



35

accusations and financial constraints, dismissals require a high degree of emotion

management.

HR specific personal factors

Not only could we identify that interviewed HR Managers had significantly lower

Neuroticism (I2n) levels than the general population on the Big Five personality inventory,

we also could find a correlation between the levels of Neuroticism and of psychological well-

being impact on the HR Manager. This indicates that HR Managers with low neuroticism

could be less prone to have their psychological well-being at risk.

Results also indicated that the Agreeableness score of the HR manager was correlated to a

congruent work/life approach of emotions and opinions. This “congruence” preference can be

expected to be a positive factor to authenticity and therefore to the effectiveness of emotional

labor for the organization. However, it should be noted that all Deviance responses in the

sample were performed by HR Managers having a congruent approach. Finally, absolutely no

correlation could be found between the impact on the psychological well-being (I5) and

Congruence (I1) or Agreeableness (I2a).

HR emotion regulation strategies

The effect of the different kinds of emotion regulation performed in the studied narratives is

consistent with what was anticipated from other studies and formalized in our proposed model

(Chart 1). Antecedent based emotion regulation is by far the most efficient response to

mitigate the impact on oneself of an emotionally intense situation. On the contrary, response

focused emotion regulation is most often of neutral effect and almost has often worsening as

effective. This would indicate a clear benefit for HR Managers to use “deep acting” rather

than “surface acting”, for their well-being but also probably for organizational efficiency:

although through the interviews we could not measure the impact of the narratives on the



36

organization, studies on other occupations (Grandey, 2000) all indicate the higher

organizational efficiency of antecedent focused emotion regulation thanks to the higher level

of perceived authenticity it conveys.

HR mitigation and recovery strategies

During the interviews, HR Managers were asked to list, for each situation, what they did

before or during the event to mitigate the impact of the emotional situation on them and what

they did after the event to recover from it. The great diversity of answers did not allow to

perform the same kind of quantitative analysis as for other variables. However, some patterns

appeared.

Most participants quoted distancing and preparation as key strategies used prior to emotional

events. In that context, distancing means avoiding emotional involvement with any person

who may later be part of an emotional situation which, in the case of an HR Manager, often

means anyone in the workplace. Most HR Managers would set themselves some boundaries,

for instance being social but not friendly, leaving early enough during company parties, etc.

Being prepared was also often quoted as key to successful emotion regulation. It involves the

knowledge of the topics discussed and of the interlocutors but also the anticipation of the

potential feelings and reactions of the interlocutors, before the event.

During the event, the most often described techniques were the escape, mostly through the

interruption of the meeting or through diversion, and the mental reassessment of the situation,

i.e. a preparation for antecedent based emotion regulation.

After the emotional events, three main practices are used by HR Managers to recover from

emotional stress. The first one is to talk to a trusted peer, colleague, friend or partner,

depending on the situation. Interestingly, some isolated HR Managers said they decided at



37

some point to breach their distancing principles to “restate” a colleague as “friend rather than

co-worker”. The second set of techniques involve relaxation or physical activities: breathing,

going for a walk, etc. Finally, many HR Managers use a coach or a therapist in order to be

able to share their burden without involving co-workers or having to open bridges between

their professional and personal lives.

Practical recommendations

The first practical implication of the findings of this study is on the selection of candidates to

and HR Manager position in a large organization. The amount of Labor Relations and

Dismissals or the level of requirement on the Change Champion and Credible Activist

competency domains are quite easy to assess and could be considered as a good indicator of

the emotional labor intensity of the role. Once an HR Manager role is identified as involving

intense emotional labor, it would be advisable to consider three dimensions for selection:

- Low neuroticism could be predictive of a good resilience to HR emotional labor

- Agreeableness could be predictive of the authenticity approach. A high agreeableness

would tend to indicate a congruent approach which would fit well roles where a high

perceived authenticity is key while deviance is either unlikely due to a participative

and ethical approach or accepted by the management. On the contrary, a low

agreeableness could indicate a separation approach well adapted to roles where the

sensitivity to perceived authenticity is lower and where the risk associated to deviance

is high, for instance due to an authoritarian leadership style or diverging values.

- Selection interviews should verify the ability for the candidate to function without

friendship in the workplace if the role does not allow a lot of contact with HR peers.

In terms of talent development and learning, the resilience and efficiency of HR Managers

could mainly benefit from developing three skills:



38

- How to prepare each emotional meeting, for instance by putting oneself literally in the

other’s seat to simulate the conversation and better understand and anticipate the

reactions.

- How to reassess situations and opinions about people and, more generally, all

antecedent based emotion regulation techniques.

- How to relax, through deep breathing, meditation or any relaxation technique.

Finally, the work environment of the HR Manager could be adapted to minimize the impact of

emotional labor:

- The hierarchical manager of the HR Manager should be made aware of the factors and

consequences of emotional labor and prompted to provide regular support and

listening to the HR Manager

- The emotion regulation responsibilities of the HR Manager should be formalized, in

the same way as toxin handling responsibilities (Kulik, Cregan, Metz, & Brown, 2009)

- Even when no HR peer is available in the workplace, peer coaching or peer talking

could be organized to make sure isolated HR Managers all have a trustable person to

talk to.

- A guideline should be agreed to make sure HR Managers are always assisted by a peer

or a manager when they are facing hostile groups such as Trade Unions.

- An integrity charter should be made available and enforced to limit the situations

where the HR Manager has to fight alone for ethical principles, for instance in the case

of discriminations.



39

Limitations

The main limitation of the study comes from the sample of HR Managers that was used. The

number of interviewees was sized for the qualitative identification of patterns but is not large

enough to validate quantitatively all hypotheses, given the number of variables. Also, the HR

Managers who were interviewed were mainly coming from France and therefore cannot be

considered as representative of the situation in any other country.

The qualitative grounded theory approach involved interpretation in the categorization of the

narratives and in the identification of patterns. The resulting imprecision of measurement

implied to work with lower correlation coefficients than with a more normative measurement.

Finally, the chosen methodology did not allow to reliably measure the efficiency for the

organization of the emotional labor performed by the HR manager: all efficiency indications

were given by the HR Managers and not by an independent source.

Future Research

Future research should further investigate the relation between the emotional labor strategies

used by HR Managers and their effect on the organization, in particular through the

measurement of perceived authenticity.

Also, HR Managers from more diverse geographies and profiles could be studied to

investigate the potential replication of the findings of this study.



40

Conclusion

The Human Resources function has come a long way since Personnel Administration,

progressively gaining credibility on more value creating activities. Now true business partner,

HR is also more and more truly working on human material: engagement, culture,

psychosocial risks, etc. Today’s HR Manager is getting, together with the excitement of being

at the core of the business and the joy of working with so noble a material as people, the

anxiety of playing with a very special kind of fire: emotions. More and more, HR leaders are

asked to design the emotional landscape of organizations, to handle the toxic emotions of

employees and to regulate one’s emotions. This study shows that the journey is not without

dangers but also that the right people, with the right training and the right support can, by

combining authenticity to themselves and to others, manage emotions effectively for the

organization and safely for themselves.



41

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Table of Contents

Abstract ................................................................................................................ 2

Introduction: ........................................................................................................ 3

Research aims and objectives: ........................................................................... 5

Literature Review: .............................................................................................. 5

Emotional Labor ..................................................................................................................... 5

Proposed integrative model .................................................................................................... 6

Human Resources ................................................................................................................... 8

Methodology: ....................................................................................................... 9

Data Collection ....................................................................................................................... 9

Data Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 10

Description of the Research Setting: ............................................................... 12

Pilot wave ............................................................................................................................. 13

Main wave ............................................................................................................................ 14

Validation wave .................................................................................................................... 15

Demographics of interviewees ............................................................................................. 15

Specifications of critical incidents ........................................................................................ 17

Data Gathering and Analysis ........................................................................... 18

Analysis by interlocutor ........................................................................................................ 21

Analysis by Situations .......................................................................................................... 22



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Analysis based on with Ulrich’s HR competency model ..................................................... 26

Analysis by personality traits ............................................................................................... 28

Analysis by kind of emotional response ............................................................................... 31

Findings and Discussion.................................................................................... 33

HR specific contextual EL factors: ....................................................................................... 33

HR specific personal factors ................................................................................................. 35

HR emotion regulation strategies ......................................................................................... 35

HR mitigation and recovery strategies ................................................................................. 36

Practical recommendations ................................................................................................... 37

Limitations ......................................................................................................... 39

Future Research ................................................................................................ 39

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 40

Bibliography: ..................................................................................................... 41

Tables .................................................................................................................. 54

Charts ................................................................................................................. 54



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Tables

Table 1: Analysis of Big Five Personality profiles of interviewees ......................................... 16

Table 2: Number of narratives by type of interlocutor and type of situation ........................... 18

Table 3: Distribution of narratives by country and industry .................................................... 18

Table 4: Distribution of narratives by interlocutor type and intensity level ............................ 21

Table 5: Distribution of narratives by interlocutor type and impact level ............................... 22

Table 6: Distribution of narratives by situation type and intensity level ................................. 22

Table 7: Distribution of narratives by situation type and impact level .................................... 22

Table 8: Distribution of narratives by received emotion and situation .................................... 23

Table 9: Distribution of narratives by required emotion and situation .................................... 25

Table 10: Distribution of narratives by felt emotion and situation .......................................... 25

Table 11: Distribution of narratives by displayed emotion and situation ................................ 26

Table 12: Distribution of narratives by HR Competency and Situation .................................. 27

Table 13: Distribution of narratives by HR competency and intensity .................................... 28

Table 14: Distribution of narratives by HR competency and impact ....................................... 28

Table 15: Distribution of Narratives by kind of emotional response and situation ................. 32

Table 16: Distribution of narratives by kind of response and response effect ......................... 33

Charts

Chart 1: Proposed integrative Emotional Labor Model ............................................................. 7

Chart 2: Robert Plutchik's circumplex model .......................................................................... 11

Chart 3: Big Five Personality Traits of Interviewees ............................................................... 16

Chart 4: Distribution of neuroticism scores by past well-being impact ................................... 29

Chart 5: Agreeableness score by congruence and past well-being impact............................... 31