Causes and Causation of Positive Displayed Emotion by Employees

Causes and Causation of Positive Displayed Emotion By Employees

By Alex Hukins

Introduction:

This assignment looks at previous research done into the causes and causations of displayed positive emotions by employees in a selection of shoe stores, bank branches and convenience stores. The studies were done in the U.S., Israel and Taiwan. The assignment is broken up into an analysis of each individual journal article, a discussion of all the reports and then a conclusion. At the end of the assignment it was found that employee positive displayed emotion is important in affecting the customer's view of service and their willingness to come back. Contributing effects highlight that employee displayed positive emotion could be varied depending on stress from store busyness, store atmosphere and stock levels.

Individual Analysis of Peer Review Journal Articles:

Sutton, R & Rafaeli, A ‘Untangling the Relationship Between Displayed Emotions and Organizational Sales: the Case of Convenience Stores', Stanford University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Academy of Management Journal September 1988, vol. 31, No. 3, pg. 461-487

A study done by Rafaeli and Sutton (1988) explored the effect of a positive emotional display by the customer and the effect on store sales. At 576 convenient stores they measured reactions, displayed emotions and sales. They specifically hypothesised that there would be a positive relationship between more positive displayed emotion by the employee and amount of sales at the relating store

A negative correlation between positive displayed emotion and store sales was found at the end of the study. This relates to a larger amount of store sales when there is less positive displayed emotion. The authors then decided after looking at a small correlation between the queuing line lengths and positive displayed emotion that maybe busyness of the store had something to do with positive displayed emotion.

Revision of the hypothesis was then done by Rafaeli and Sutton. Considerations for the new hypothesis included, customer norms and the idea that clerks are less likely to show positive emotions during busier times. The new hypotheses were store sales would be negatively

20371267 Organisational Behaviour Alex Hukins

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related to the expression of positive emotion and a store's average line length would be negatively related to the expression of positive emotion. These expectations were tested using the same data points as the previous testing.

Analysis of the results seem to suggest that store busyness affects employee positive displayed emotion and not that displayed positive emotion affects the busyness of the store. On the other hand, positive displayed emotion may affect customer return rates and store recommendation. To understand this interaction more fully further research was suggested.

Following this research if a manager desires their employees to display more positive emotions they can achieve this through a reduction in employee stress. For convenience stores it is suggested by the authors to have multiple clerks attend to one line to release the stress on the customer and the clerks. Clerks can then exchange remarks and can be pleasant to the customer and the clerk doesn't have to fear other customers in the line getting angry. This is suggested to reduce the anxiety of the customer about having chosen the right line. Furthermore there is a demonstrated correlation between employee displayed positive emotion and high stock levels. This could be to do with customers taking their anger out on clerks when the store lacks a certain product or just that the clerks get frustrated at having to explain this fact.

Sutton, R & Rafaeli, A ‘Busy Stores and Demanding Customers: How Do

They Affect the Display of Positive Emotion?', Stanford University, university of Michigan and Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Academy of Management Journal September 1990, vol. 33, No. 3, pg. 623-637

The next peer review journal on positive displayed emotion is a later study done by Rafaeli and Sutton (1990). It further examines how busy stores affect positive displayed emotion and examines how difficult customers can affect positive displayed emotion of the employees. The research and testing involved 194 transactions between cashier and customer and three hypotheses were tested.

Key difference between this article and the previous article's testing include that the testing was done in Jerusalem, Israel as opposed to the first study which was