Antecedent and outcomes emotional labor evidence from tourism industry in viet nam

In business, especially service industry, customer orientation concept is considered as a crucial characteristic feature that allows employees to carry out their duties at their workplac

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Tran Thanh Tam

Antecedent and Outcomes of Emotional Labor: Evidence from Tourism Industry in Vietnam

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Tran Thanh Tam

Antecedent and Outcomes of Emotional Labor: Evidence from Tourism Industry in Vietnam

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: DR NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

Table of Content

Abstract 5

Introduction 6

Literature Review and Hypotheses 9

Literature Review 9

Hypotheses 14

Method 18

Data Analysis 23

Sample Characteristics 23

Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis 25

Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis 26

Results of Discriminant Validity 27

Results of SEM test 28

Discussion 30

Conclusion and Managerial Implications 32

Limitations and Future Research 35

References 37

Appendix 1 SEM model 51

Appendix 2 Questionnaire English version 52

Appendix 3 Questionnaire Vietnamese version (Bảng câu hỏi khảo sát) 59

List of Tables

Table 1 : Measurements 21

Table 2 : Sample Characteristics 24

Table 3 : Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis 25

Table 4 : Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis 27

Table 5 : Results of Discriminant Validity 28

Table 6 : Results of SEM test 28

List of Figures Figure 1 : Conceptual model 18

Figure 2 : SEM model 51

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the roles of customer orientation and emotional labor on job burnout, then job burnout affects job

performance, under a foundation of conservation of resources theory

Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from a survey of 308 frontline service employees working at travel agencies, restaurants, hotels, airline ticket agents and museums Then data were analyzed by means of a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling

Findings – The results indicate that emotional labor strategies affect job

burnout, and in turn job burnout affects job performance Customer orientation does not directly affect job burnout, however, it influences emotional labor strategies

Practical implications – Managers of tourism services companies may develop

a good human resource management system to encourage front-line employees to enhance their performance related to deep acting when serving customers This, in turn, will reduce their job burnout

Keywords: Customer orientation, Emotional labor, Job burnout, Job

performance

Introduction

Nowaday, job burnout is an extremely hot keywork on the internet or in human resources management There are many articles on the internet warning about this as well as researchers doing research on this topic Job burnout concept is used to explain the chronic and accumulative job stress of staff at work (Babakus et al., 2009;

Halbesleben, 2006; Sand & Miyazaki, 2000) The consequences of job burnout are considerably serious, the persons who are exhausted in their work feel emotionally exhausted, lack of energy, become suspicious, easily react negatively, should be

heartless, or no longer confident in their job (Maslach & Leiter, 2008) Recent

scientific studies have confirmed that employees in service industry, especially

frontline service employees, are subjects to job burnout (Cho, Bonn, Han, & Lee, 2016; Lee, An, & Noh, 2015; Rahim & Cosby, 2016; Wu & Shie, 2017) The intensity

of contact with customers (almost daily), the duty of meeting all requirements related

to customers treatment and the enforcement of making customers happy as a job evaluation criterion (Yoo & Arnold, 2014) Enterprises in service industry are

interested in this issue, because the problems related to job burnout can directly affect customers’ satisfaction, employees’ performance results and especially their revenue and profit (Kim et al., 2017)

In business, especially service industry, customer orientation concept is

considered as a crucial characteristic feature that allows employees to carry out their duties at their workplace (Babakus et al., 2009; Wu & Shie, 2017); For example:

"Customer is the most important in my job"; "I always try my best to give my

customers the best services" Enterprises take customer orientation into employees’

duties as a motto to serve customers, as the value of employees’ work, showing their real concern in providing better services to customers (Brown et al., 2002) Previous studies related to job burnout, customer orientation and job performance, emotional labor was usually seen as a mediated factor and was studied in the case of frontline service employees working in service industry, especially hospitality, restaurant and airlines (Cho et al., 2016; Hur et al., 2013; Hur et al., 2015; ; Kim et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2015) Hochschild (1983) defined emotional labor as a process of working by emotion; employees have to join in many different scenarios to arrange their emotion display in accordance with enterprises’ expectation Specifically, the research of Yoo and Arnold (2014) found that elements of emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) were mediated elements influencing the relationship between customer

orientation and emotional exhaustion (an important part of Job burnout) Customer orientation was seen as an adjusting tool to prevent negative impacts of job burnout to job performance It meant that customer orientation could reduce negative influence of job burnout on job performance of frontline service employees with high customer orientation (Babakus & Yavas, 2012) In hospitality sector, frontline service

employees with high customer orientation always want to serve customers in a polite and helpful way; and always ensure of improving customer service quality (Babakus

et al., 2010) However, most of research mention frontline service employees in terms

of enterprises in retailing, restaurant, hotel, and airline agents but there is not any research mentions frontline service employees in terms of tourism service sector Specifically, frontline service employees working for travel companies, restaurants and hotels serving group of visitors, visit locations and ticket agents

Most research on Vietnam tourism service focus on customers Customers’ attitude, behavior, feeling and satisfaction are always the main purpose or topic in many surveys and research Customers are asked about their satisfaction with the service they received and how to get their satisfaction and loyalty All resolutions stand on the customers’ side For example, the most recent research studied on

customers’ feeling about destination, negative emotion of customers with failure service (Le & Nguyen, 2017; Le & Nguyen, 2018) Few research studying on the human resources in case of tourism industry or, if so, are incomplete Especially, no research mentions or explains the relationship among job burnout, emotional labor customer orientation and job performance in tourism service sector Following the future trend, service sector of Vietnam in general and tourism services in particular are

on the trend of growing up and will be developed rapidly and strongly in the coming years (Xuan & Duong, 2017) According to Lien (2017), tourism services had great contribution into Vietnam economy, specifically about 6% in 2016 and 7.5% in 2017

of the national GDP; In 2017, Vietnam welcomed over 10 million visitors, not

including domestic sources; And it is expected to have from 13 million to 15 million guests visiting Vietnam in 2018 However, statistics showed that there are only about 750,000 direct workers and 2.2 million indirect workers working in tourism sector (Chau, 2017) This is a low figure, the rate of increase in labor of this sector is even lower than the rate of increase in the number of visitors This reality leads to tourism industry staff are usually under tremendous pressure on the workload and the

requirements of satifying customers The problems of human resources, especially high-quality human resources that are not sufficiently met the industry need (Chau,

2017), is a challenge that requires managers to create solutions that inspire the

passion, enthusiasm and commitment to reduce job burnout and retain frontline

service employees while waiting for the persons being trained

This study aims to investigate the impact of customer orientation on emotional labor, job burnout, and job performance of frontline service employees in tourism industry Through this research, tourism services companies can have realistic

understanding of the human resources, thereby developing a better management strategy to encourage employees to increase their performance related to Emotional Labor Strategies to serve customers, motivate them to be loyal to the company,

commit to serve customers well, increase work efficiency and reduce work

exhaustion

Literature Review and Hypotheses

Literature Review

Conservation of resources (COR) theory

COR theory is based on the basic rule that persons try to minimize the loss of resources The main concept of this theory is the loss of resources Actually, the persons who have more resources, are more likely to avoid stress than the persons not having much resources (Alarcon et al., 2011) Persons focus on collecting, maitaining, fostering and protecting resources to avoid losing valuable resources In addition, the resources are value-added elements that can create change and assist in replenishing lost resources (Alvaro et al., 2010) The first principle of COR theory focuses on the

means that the persons who lose their resources, will motivate themselves to improve the lost resources figures (regain lost ones) or focus on their own weaknesses, and lose more resources (Woo, 2014) The second principle focuses on resources investing to protect against loss of resources, restore lost resources and promote the collection of additional resources to prevent future deficits (Alarcon et al., 2011)

Customer Orientation (CO)

In accordance with the definition of Babakus et al (2009), customer orientation

is an important personality trait that allows employees to implement their duties at work Customer orientation is a psychological resource that creates the desired

working results because customer orientation helps shaping employee perceptions and attitudes toward their work Specifically, customer orientation employees can timely resolve customer requirements and issues, treat customers politely and nicely, and maintain a consistent level of emotion in their interaction with customers As

individual level, customer orientation was considered as a personality trait (Brown et al., 2002), a mixture of attitude and behavious (Stock & Hoyer, 2005) Frontline

service employees with high customer orientation tend to provide good services in a natural way They prefer working and believe that providing timely and effective services to customers is a major function of their work (Wu, Shie, & Gordon, 2017) Customer orientation at enterprise-level is generalized as an organizational culture, an active collective process that leads to organizational success (Brockman et al., 2012; Hanzaee & Mirvaisi, 2011; Wu & Shie, 2017)

In this study, COR theory is also used as a fundamental theory, explaining the relationship among factors customer orientation, emotional labor, job burnout, and job performance Customer orientation is viewed as a personality trait of frontline service employees in tourism services

Emotional Labor (EL)

Emotional labor, which is also known as emotion labor or emotion labour, or emotional labour, is an important and essential part in service sector (Bu et al., 2015) Emotional labor has been proved to have an impact on the efficiency of organizations and individuals (Grandey et al., 2015) Emotional labor is defined as the management

of emotional expression in order to create appropriate visual display of the face and the body, based on organization desires There are two different types of emotional labor action strategy: surface acting (SA) and deep acting (DA) (Hochschild, 1983) Surface acting refers to the management of external emotional expression without any change in inner feelings, which is also known as emotional impersonation, while deep acting relates to an effort to create desired emotional display (Burch et al., 2013) In the positive case, the employee represents surface acting at the request of organization

to improve organization performance or to please service recipient For example, employees smile because they know customers like it, though they do not really feel happy In the negative case, their smile is just made to obey their obligation to their organization In contrast, deep acting is a process through which employees change their internal emotions to fit the expectations of organization, the emotions created on the display are natural and true emotions (Grandey et al., 2013) The fact that internal

(Woo, 2014) Thus, surface acting occurs at the level of expression and deep acting occurs at the level of experience In later studies, another emotional labor component was found, that is genuine acting (GA) The third part of emotional labor is a true emotion, individuals do not always have to change emotion or emotional expression to meet the display principles; sometimes they really feel the desired emotion and

naturally express it (McCauley & Gardner, 2016)

Many studies have shown that surface acting is more likely to lead to negative health outcomes than deep acting (Lee et al., 2015) The contradiction between the real emotion and the display principles leads to surface action, which is only for the purpose of implementing the display principles This leads to emotional inhibition of employees To solve this inhibition, frontline service employees are required to use some resources to regain emotional balance Thus, surface acting strategy requires the investing of resources in accordance with the display principles and managing

emotional imbalance (Woo, 2014) According to Wu and Shie (2017), deep acting was not like surface acting, since the self-resources needed to be invested to follow the display principles and there is no imbalance need to be managed A number of

previous studies have shown that deep acting was positively related to job

performance because it gave service staff a sense of accomplishment through

customers positive feedback (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Brotheridge & Lee, 2002; Tolich, 1993)

Job Burnout (JB)

Job burnout is a chronic matter related to work, that is progressively developed

as a result of persistent stress in the workplace (Sokka et al., 2016) Job burnout seems close to stress but not stress Stress is defined as the reaction of a person to

environmental disturbances, resulting at the physics, psychology or behavior of

member of organization Job burnout refers to psychological stress of workers because

of chronic and accumulative job stress over a long period of time (Halbesleben, 2006) The consequences of job burnout include the following: emotional exhaustion,

cynicism and reducing personal achievement (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Lee & Ashforth, 1996; Maslach, 1982; Maslach & Leiter, 2008) As one of the fundamental components of work exhaustion, emotional exhaustion refers to "the feeling of being overwhelmed and exhausting one's emotional and physical resources" (Maslach & Leiter, 2008, p 498) Cynicism and reducing personal achievement make employees lose confidence in their ability to finish work and doubt their contribution or influence

to their organization (Shin, 2003) Monitoring of job burnout symptoms is necessary for an organization because it does not only affects employee satisfaction and

performance, but can also have a serious effect on customers’ satisfaction (Lee et al., 2015)

Job Performance

Job performance is considered extremely important in the field of human

resources and organizational behavior; a number of research have focused on the influence of this factor Job performance refers to individual behavior that contributes

to organizational goals (Rotundo & Sackett, 2002) Job performance also refers to the full implementation of technical requirements, that includes specific effort or behavior

to meet the requirements of an organization (Rank et al., 2009) Job performance in this study is considered to assess the level of performance of employees in terms of the goals assigned, the self-assessment of the level of performance on his or her own level

Hypotheses

Customer Orientation and Emotional Labor

In tourism services sector, managers place strict demands on attitudes and

emotions for employees to follow when serving customers Frontline service

employees must choose to demonstrate through surface acting (fake positive emotion

or subduce negative emotion) or deep acting (modify emotion to create real positive emotion displays) or genuine acting to please the customers (Grandey et al., 2005) In order to create positive displays, employees will adjust themselves and this adjusting leads to the exhaustion of limited resources, which is the cause of work exhaustion (Muraven et al., 2006) According to COR, customer orientation can play an important role as a resource supplementing for the lost resources and influence which strategy should be chosen (Wu & Shie, 2017) Frontline service employees with high customer orientation can be awared of the benefit from successful meeting with customers, therefore they automatically express the desired emotion through joining in deep acting strategy or genuine acting, and satisfy with their job; in this case, it is less likely that they choose surface acting while contacting with customers (Babakus et al., 2009;

Lee et al., 2016; Wu & Shie, 2017) In the contrast, frontline service employees with low customer orientation, who are passive and pessimistic, will choose surface acting

to express their emotion and have to spend more resources to balance themselves after that (Wu & Shie, 2017) Frontline employees with high CO naturally express their genuine emotions or strive to adjust their internal feelings to align them with the desired emotions They are more likely to show attitudes and behaviours on their job that require effort andare less likely to act superficially during service interactions (Smith et al., 2012) This study thus proposes the following hypotheses:

H1 There is a negative relationship between Customer Orientation and Surface Acting

H2 There is a positive relationship between Customer Orientation and Genuine Acting

H3 There is a positive relationship between Customer Orientation and Deep Acting

Emotional Labor and Job Burnout

Tourism services market is getting more and more competitive, to enhance service quality and customer satisfaction, organizations build many rules related to customer service and display Frontline service employees will have to manage their emotions and make effort in expressing friendly feelings when interacting with

customers (Karatepe, 2010) Special acting strategies are used to meet organizational requirements: surface acting (fake emotion), deep acting (actually experience the desired emotion), genuine acting (sincerely express emotion) (Hochschild, 1983; McCauley and Gardner, 2016) However, it is important to choose emotional

strategies to serve customers because customers can also distinguish between artificial

(Pugh, 2001) Due to this reason, frontline service employees is directly affected to their feelings and caused job burnout as an undesirable The results of previous

research have proved that frontline service employees who selected deep acting could

be able to show emotion more naturally than frontline service employees selecting surface acting so they were also more satisfied with their job and escaping from job burnout (Cheung and Lun, 2015; Lee et al., 2015) Lee et al (2015) pointed out that deep acting had a positive role in reducing job burnout for employess, while surface acting could raise stress related to work by exhausting employees’ emotion in serving customers Thus, the suggested hypotheses are:

H4 There is a positive relationship between Surface Acting and Job Burnout

H5 There is a negative relationship between Genuine Acting and Job Burnout

H6 There is a negative relationship between Deep Acting and Job Burnout

Customer orientation and Job Burnout

When studying the relationship among customer orientation, emotional labor, and job burnout, Wu & Shie (2017) applied COR theory to confirm that job burnout occurs when employees find their resources depleted, it is difficult to regain them and become stress (Karatepe et al., 2009) Then, as human resource, customer orientation can be the premise supplementing for the loss of self-resource due to the demand of that job Specifically, frontline service employees with high customer orientation can search and gather the resources needed to overcome obstacles (Harris et al., 2006), because they have stronger motivation to serve customers They do not want to lose their jobs, they feel the customer satisfaction as a motivation and the passing of this

stage will help them to succeed Because of this reason, they view the loss of

resources as just temporary status and believe that through their efforts, the cause of the loss of resources will decrease (Babakus & Yavas, 2012) Meanwhile, frontline services employees with low customer orientation, who are less interested in serving and responding to customer needs, must be forced to follow the display principles Because of their passive and pessimistic nature, these efforts consume emotional and cognitive sources and eventually lead directly to exhaustion (Babakus et al., 2010) Therefore, frontline service employees in tourism service with high customer

orientation are more likely to perceive their work and get low job burnout The

hypothesis is as follow:

H7 There is a negative relationship between Customer Orientation and Job Burnout

Job Burnout and Job Performance

Managing job burnout in the workplace is very important, especially at

companies and organizations providing travel services Job burnout does not only affect the work attitude, it also affects the performance of each employee The

emotional, psychological and physical conditions of the staff are found to be

important determinants of the quality of services provided to customers (Mayer, 2002) In particular, frontline service employees usually have to deal with stresses related to work, leading to high levels of emotional exhaustion Thus, they can not accomplish the job performance as expected in the context of orienting customer service business A recent study by Choi et al (2014) notes that emotional exhaustion can make service employees impatient, causing emotional gap with customers and

lead to failure service and low performance The following is suggested as a

hypothesis for the research:

H8 There is a negative relationship between Job Burnout and Job Performance

Figure 1.: Conceptual model

Method

The research model includes four concepts: customer orientation, emotional

labor, job burnout and job performance The measurement scale for these conceptual

structures is derived from previous studies that has been mentioned in the proposed

research model and adapted to the context of Vietnam The study was conducted in

two phases: (1) Pilot study; and (2) The main survey

Pilot study

Using qualitative method to adjust or supplement observational variables, adjust

the scale in measuring research concepts In-depth interviews were conducted with 5

experts / staffs in tourism services sector: 01 CEO of a hotel and travel website, 01 Head of Sale of a travel company, 01 CEO of a travel company, 01 Head of

illustration department of a museum, 01 Head of reception department of a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City to collect ideas Their opinions and recommendations for revising the wording, the number of questions in survey were incorporated into the final survey Pilot study’s results show that:

Customer orientation concept with 6 items (Susskind et al., 2007; Susskind et al., 2003) is adjusted to 5 items, measured by a 5 point Likert scale from 1 (Absolutely disagree) to 5 (Absolutely agree)

Emotional labor concept with15 items (Chu & Murrmann, 2006) is adjusted to

11 items that are quite similar to those of (Diefendorff et al., 2006), including 3 items for deep acting, 06 items for surface acting and 02 items for genuine acting The Likert scale from 1 (absolutely not right to me) to 5 (absolutely right to me) is used in this case

Job burnout concept is discussed based on the version of 22 items of (Bakker et al., 2002); Experts say that there are many items and burnout in the tourism service sector in Vietnam is not at such a serious level Experts agree that job Burnout can be measured in three categories: emotional burnout, cynicism and professional

inefficacy After refining, the number of items is reduced to 16 items corresponds to job burnout concept of Shin, 2003 and Schaufeli et al., 2008 Measurement is based on

7 points Likert from 1 (Never) to 7 (Everyday)

Job performance concept has 04 items in accordance with Goodman and

Svyantek (1999) and performed a 5 point Likert scale measurement from 1

(Absolutely disagree) to 5 (Absolutely agree)

The screening question should be put at the beginning of the questionnaire to

recognize the valid interviewers

The main survey

After pilot study, the measurement scale is adjusted to a completed scale and used for the formal quantitative study The sample size is based on the 5: 1 principle (Nguyen, 2013), meaning that for every question, 5 samples are needed The

measurement scale includes 36 observational variables evaluate 04 research concepts,

09 questions related to sample features (sex, age, education level, level of

employment, occupation, years in industry, years working in the company, monthly income and customer contact rate); It should have at least 45 * 5 = 225 samples The survey was conducted in a convenient method with n = 350 Questionnaires were sent directly to frontline service employees of travel agencies, hotels, restaurants,

museums, airline ticket agents, and hotel and travel websites in Ho Chi Minh City by email, messages, phone interview and face to face interview In order to identify valid respondents, two screening questions putting at the beginning of the questionnaire were included “Are you working in the tourism service industry?” and “Do you contact directly with customers in your work?” If respondents chose “Yes” for both questions, they were considered as valid and asked to do the survey at next page In case of “No” answer received for just one question, respondents were asked to stop

and ignore the survey and delivered “Thank you” message There were 343 receipts (out of 350) After eliminating unqualified samples (those with a contact rate are

under 50%), the remaining 308 samples were used to run the research

Research used SPSS and AMOS software to process and analyze collected data Specifically, SPSS was used to evaluate the scale using Cronbach's Alpha and EFA analyzes to examine convergence value and discriminant value (Nguyen, 2013);

AMOS was used to run CFA and test the Model Fit index of the research model (Hair

et al., 2006) Model of 4 research concepts with 36 observational variables is

presented in Table 1

Table 1 Measurements

CO1 It is best to ensure that our customers receive the best

possible service available

Customer Orientation (CO)

5 Items

(Susskind et al., 2007; Susskind et al., 2003)

CO2 As an employee responsible for providing service,

customers are very important to me

CO3 When performing my job, the customer is most

important to me

CO4 I believe that providing timely, efficient service to

customers is a major function of my work

CO5 If possible, I meet all requests made by my customers

DA1 I make an effort to actually feel the emotions that I

need to display toward others

Emotion Labor (EL)

11 Items

(Chu and Murrmann, 2006; Diefendorff et al., 2005; Diefendorff

et al., 2006)

DA2 I work hard to feel the emotions that I need to show

to customers

DA3 I work at developing the feelings inside of me that I

need to show to customers

SA1 I put on an act in order to deal with customers in an

appropriate way

SA2 I fake a good mood when interacting with customers

SA3 I just pretend to have the emotions I need to display

for my work

SA4 I put on a ‘‘mask’’ in order to display the emotions I

need for the job

SA5 I show feelings to customers that are different from

what I feel inside

SA6 I fake the emotions I show when dealing with

et al., 2008)

JB2 I feel used up at the end of the workday

JB3 I feel fatigued when I get up in the morning and have

to face another day on the job

JB4 Working with people all day is really a strain for me

JB5 I feel frustrated by my work

JB6 I have become less interested in my job since I started

this job

JB7 I have become less enthusiastic about my work

JB8 I become more cynical about whether my work

contributes anything

JB9 I doubt the significance of my work

JB10 I do not really care what happens to my customers

JB11 I deal very effective with the problems of my

JB14 I think that I can easily understand how my customer

feel about things

JB15 I feel very energetic in my work

JB16 I think my job is usefulness to make value for my

JP2 I meet criteria for performance

JP3 I fulfill all the requirements of my job


JP4 I perform well in my overall job by carrying out tasks

Table 2 Sample Characteristics

Demographic

Numbers (N=308) Tỷ lệ %

From 06 months to under 02 years 64 20.8

Year working for

the recent company

From 06 months to under 02 years 78 25.3

Demographic

Numbers (N=308) Tỷ lệ %

The ratio of work

Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Table 3 Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis

Factor Item Fator loading Cronbach’s

Results of Cronbach’s alpha and Exploratory Factor Analysis were presented in Table 3 The Cronbach’s alpha of the six constructs: customer orientation, surface acting, genuine acting, deep acting, job burnout and job performance ranged from 0.702 to 0.927, which indicated the reliability of the scale and internal consistency within factor (Peterson, 1994) Then, EFA with varimax rotation was conducted to assess the underlying structure for 36 items of this study There were 25 items which categorized into six concepts of this study with greater than 0.650 of loading factors and 66,493% of variance extracted Eleven items with loading less than 0.5 which including 01 item of surface acting, 01 item of deep acting and 09 items of job

burnout were omitted to improve clarity

Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis were presented in Table 4 There were

23 items which had CFA factor loadings in measurement model were equal or greater than 0.533 (p < 0.001) satisfying convergent validity level 02 items which had CFA factor loading value be lower than 0.5, were excluded from the model to keep model fitness (Hair et al., 2010) These items were “I put on an act in order to deal with customers in an appropriate way” and “I just pretend to have the emotions I need to display for my work”

The CFA results showed CMIN = 358.236, df = 211, CMIN/df = 1.698, GFI = 0.910, AGFI = 0.882, NFI = 0.904, IFI = 0.958, TLI = 0.949, CFI = 0.958 and

RMSEA = 0.048 The several fit criteria based on Hair et al (2010), whereby the CFA results must have the value of GFI, NFI, IFI, TFI and CFI be greater than 0.9, higher than 0.85 with AGFI, lower than 0.08 with RMSEA and lower than 0.3 with

CMIN/df The all of criterion of proposed model were consistent well with the

matching standard so concluding that it had goodness of fit

Table 4 Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Factor Item Estimate Standardized

Results of discriminant validity

The discriminant validity analysis between all contructs were shown on Table

5 The results showed that CR of factors were greater than 0.7, MSV were less than AVE, and the square root of AVE were higher than all of the correlations between

any pair of constructs It means that discriminant validity was statistically supported

Results of SEM test

The results of SEM test for the final model included CMIN = 447.125, df = 218, CMIN/df = 2.051, GFI = 0.891, AGFI = 0.862, NFI = 0.880, IFI = 0.935, TLI = 0.923, CFI = 0.934 and RMSEA = 0.059 Some of value were slightly less than critaria but

the final SEM model had CFI, AGFI, IFI, TLI and CMIN/df be met standard so the

goodness-of-fit was acceptable

Table 6 Results of SEM test

CMIN = 447.125, df = 218, CMIN/df = 2.051, GFI = 0.891, AGFI = 0.862, NFI = 0.880,

IFI = 0.935, TLI = 0.923, CFI = 0.934, RMSEA = 0.059, *** P < 0.01

Results of Hypotheses were presented in Table 6 Firstly, H2 and H3 were supported, deep acting and genuine acting were positively influenced by customer orientation, with the value of the path coefficient at 0.347 (p = 0.000) and 0.401 (p = 0.000) These results were also matched with the result of Wu & Shi, 2017 research, which showed that customer orientation increase deep acting and genuine acting While H1 and H7 were not supported, customer orientation not only be found that it did not effect surface acting with the value of the path coefficient at 0.059 (p = 0.390) but also job burnout with the value of the path coefficient at -0.136 (p = 0.180) We bring out the reasons at discussion part Secondly, H4 and H6 were supported and consisted with previous study (Lee et al., 2015; Wu & Shie, 2017).Surface acting impacted on job burnout as an agent increase burnout of frontline service employees (coefficient = 0.395, p = 0.000) And these were reversed with deep acting, it

negatively affected job burnout (coefficient = -0.362, p = 0.000) One more outcome did not meet with previous research that genuine acting did not effect to job burnout (coefficient = -0.064, p = 0.488) H5 was not supported that means Genuine acting is the real emotion so when people truly feel good, they will express automatically (McCauley & Gardner, 2016) It is the reason why many passed studies did not

mention genuine acting as a fator of emotional labor (Delpechitre & Beeler, 2018; Hur

et al., 2013; Lee at al., 2015) Finally, as expected, Hypothesis 8 was supported, job burnout tend to decrease job performance (coefficient = -0.158, p = 0.000) This result

is matched with study of Choi et al (2014) and Lee at al (2015)

qualification According to the study results, in tourism service setor in Vietnam, customer orientation does not have a negative impact on surface acting, customer orientation does not negatively affect job burnout as the hypothesis Customer

orientation positively affects deep acting and genuine acting; through deep acting, customer orientation affects job burnout, reducing the level of exhaustion at work The directly interviews were made with 10 frontline service employees after the model results are established, this issue is interpreted as follows:

Firstly, the content of customer orientation is the service viewpoint of the

industry, of the company so this is always present in the perception of the frontline service employee; they always remember it when entering to the company and serving customers Simply, they do not want to lose their jobs so they are aware of following this rule This is also the reason why 6 items of professional inefficacy of job burnout were excluded from the survey Few interviewees negatively assess themslves, which lead to lack of confidence and determination to perform customer service

Secondly, chossing deep acting or genuine acting instead of surface acting helps them to reduce customer's perception of being surface acting, control their emotions over excessive demands of customers or negative temper of unsatisfied customers However, choosing deep acting and genuine acting does not mean that they are happy with customers; it helps them to calmly solve the problems without violating

companies’ regulations Deep acting is an emotional labor strategy that consumes a lot

of mental energy and effort, and is likely to cause emotional exhaustion However, it also has the potential to reduce work exhaustion by synchronizing the actual emotion

of the employee with the requirements of the company (Hochschild, 1983) But

sometimes, it can not make customers satisfied with the service quality (Rosie, 2015)

Thirdly, with much work intensity, they can not use surface acting to achieve customer orientation It is impossible to pretend to say and smile to customers all day Being able to keep calm is a great achievement Since they have chosen deep acting and genuine acting from the beginning, customer orientation can not have an impact

on their surface acting

The results also reveal the existence of surface acting and the influence of

surface acting to job burnout The respondents said they were tired and exhausted because of some other impacts, such as the relationship between colleagues, support devision, or the salaries did not match the results they had achieved The result of job burnout is the negative effect on job performance, which is the result of many

previous studies (Cho et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2012; Shaukat et al., 2016) For

example, a tour guide is tired of having to depend on work with the operator and the

department at the end of the tour; restaurant service employees depend on the kitchen staff

The results of this study are quite similar to some previous studies in Airlines Industry In those studies, similar to customer orientation, emotional display rules are the requirements on emotional expression, attitudes and behavior when serving clients (Ekman & Friesen 1975; Goldberg & Grandey 2007) Emotional display rules can be used to influence the feelings of service workers, helping them achieve their expected performance (Ashforth & Humphrey 1993; Cropanzano et al., 2004; Diefendorff & Richard 2003) Korean airlines have adopted emotional display rules as a regulation and motto of the industry to please “the gods” The study by Lee et al (2015) was published in a Q1 magazine in the field of Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality

Management explained the impact of emotional display rules on emotional labor and job burnout of Korean flight attendants The results showed that emotional display rules did not affect the surface acting and job burnout of the flight attendants, the flight attendants chose the implementation of the emotional display rules when

serving customers The reason is that the flight attendants always keep in mind that emotional display rules is a requirement in the workplace, and they have also been trained in the emotions, skills and attitudes of serving customers Instead choosing to show in surface acting, they choose deep acting as a solution to relieve stress at work

Conclusion and Managerial Implications

Customer orientation has an important role, and according to COR theory, employees with high customer orientation can express more realisyic felling and