Business Commons^™

The Role Of Emotional Labor In Performance Appraisal: Are Supervisors Getting Into The Act?, Samantha A. Ritchie, Allison L. O'Malley

Alison L. O'Malley

Researchers have issued a call for research on emotional labor to move beyond service roles to other organizational roles (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). The present paper proposes that emotional labor plays a pivotal role during performance feedback exchanges between supervisors and subordinates. We suggest that the emotional labor supervisors engage in while providing performance feedback is a vital mechanism by which leaders impact followers' perceptions of the feedback environment (Steelman, Levy, & Snell, 2004) and, subsequently, important outcomes (e.g., employee satisfaction with the feedback, motivation to use feedback, feedback seeking frequency, and LMX quality).