How emotional labor harms employee’s performance: unleashing the missing links through anxiety, quality of work-life and Islamic work ethic

Abstract

Employing conservation of resources (COR) theory, this research examined how emotional labor influences employees’ job performance by testing a serial mediation moderation model. We propose job anxiety and quality of work-life (QoWL) as explanatory mechanisms in the emotional labor–job performance relationship, and Islamic work ethic as a coping mechanism between job-related anxiety and quality of work-life. To test our proposed hypotheses, the data was collected from 211 service sector supervisor-subordinate dyads in a three waved time-lagged study. Results elaborate that service employees who suffer from resource depletion due to emotional labor and job-related anxiety can still enjoy a better quality of work-life and deliver well at their workplace when they possess a stronger Islamic work ethic.

Keywords:

• emotional labor
• job–related anxiety
• quality of work-life
• Islamic work ethic
• job performance

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.