Using Emotional Labor to Increase Sales Performance; the Role of Perceived Organizational Support

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Prof., Department of Management, Faculty of Management and Accounting, Allameh Tabataba`i University, Tehran, Iran.

2 MSc., Department of Management, Faculty of Management and Accounting, Allameh Tabataba`i University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Objective
The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of emotional labor on the sales performance of insurance agencies. The researchers seek to observe if employees have the ability to control and moderate their emotions and feelings in accordance with the requirements of the organization and their role, then how their work performance will be affected. In addition, the present study examines whether the perception of organizational support moderates this relationship. This study attempts to observe the insurance industry and among insurance agencies, and since the sales performance of insurance agencies is the main element of their work performance, it is addressed whether they have the characteristics of emotional labor in their agency sales performance and which of the dimensions and characteristics of emotional labor will have a greater impact on the sales performance of insurance agencies. In addition, the role of perception of organizational support will be studied as a moderator variable.
 
Methodology
The present study is descriptive in terms of method and is applied in terms of purpose and a survey. It is a quantitative research in terms of the nature of data collection. The statistical population of the present study includes the insurance representatives of Alborz Insurance Company in Tehran provided that they have been active at least during the time of conducting the research. In order to establish a correlation between the sales performance data of each insurance agency and the data related to emotional labor and perceived organizational support, the research questionnaires were identified separately for each agency. An online method has been used to distribute the questionnaire.
 
Findings
Demographic information showed that the same number of men and women participated in the research. In terms of age, about half of the participants were between 31 and 40 years old and one third of the participants were between 25 and 30 years old. Moreover, more than 90% of them hold a bachelor's degree or higher degrees. Based on the five Likert Scale used in the present study, it is found that emotional labor has a mean above average and the perception of organizational support has a mean lower than average. Accordingly, emotional labor and its four dimensions including tangible action, deep action, automatic display of emotions, and variety of display of emotions have a significantly positive effect on the sales performance of insurance agencies. The moderating role of perceived organizational support was not confirmed in the relationship between emotional labor and sales performance.
 
Conclusion
Superficial action as one of the dimensions of emotional labor has a significant effect on the sales performance of insurance agencies. This means that if they can encourage employees to cooperate with customers, even superficially, it may lead to an increase in sales. According to the test results of the sub-hypotheses of this research, it is clear that other dimensions of emotional labor including deep action, automatic display of emotions and variety of display of emotions have a significantly positive effect on the sales performance of insurance agents as well. Examining the coefficients related to the effect of each dimension of emotional labor on sales performance does not show much difference among different dimensions. The automatic display of emotions in this study, which was examined in the third hypothesis, had the highest impact on sales performance among the dimensions of emotional labor. In the present study, perceived organizational support does not moderate the relationship between emotional workforce and sales performance of Alborz insurance agents, and this could be due to poor employee’s perception of organizational support in this company. This means that the calculated rate for perceived organizational support could not show a significant moderating role in the present study. In other words, according to the research findings, it can be said that the employees under study do not have a good perception of the fact that the organization applies the necessary support and attention to them. Another explanation is that emotional labor and its four dimensions, regardless of the impact of the perceived organizational support variable, can affect sales performance.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Business Management
Volume 12, Issue 1
2020
Pages 94-115

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