Emotional demands, emotional labour and ...

Article

Emotional demands, emotional labour and occupational outcomes in school principals: Modelling the relationships

Educational Management Administration & Leadership 1–19 ª The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1741143215607878 emal.sagepub.com

Aimee Maxwell and Philip Riley

Abstract Most research into emotional labour is focussed on front-line service staff and health professionals, in short-term interactions. Little exists exploring the emotional labour involved in repeated ongoing interactions by educational leaders with key stakeholders. This study explored the relationships between emotional demands, three emotional labour facets, burnout, wellbeing and job satisfaction in 1320 full-time school principals. Principals displayed significantly higher scores on emotional demands at work, burnout and job satisfaction, and significantly lower wellbeing scores than the general population. Structural equation modelling revealed that emotional demands predicted the elevated use of all emotional labour strategies. Surface Acting-Hiding emotions had an inverse relationship with burnout, wellbeing and job satisfaction. Surface Acting-Faking emotions had an inverse relationship with job satisfaction. Deep Acting demonstrated no significant associations with outcome variables. The findings of this study extend the current literature on the effects of emotional labour. The study also extends understanding about the separate effects of the facets of emotional labour, which will aid in the development of interventions to reduce high levels of burnout reported by educational leaders. Keywords Emotional labour, schools, leadership, principals, burnout, wellbeing, job satisfaction, emotional demands

Introduction School leaders’ accountability and performance demands have continuously increased in Australia and internationally over the last two decades, affecting both leader and school (Earley et al., 2002; Lingard et al., 2013; West et al., 2010). Increasing accountability has the effect of decreasing decision latitude (Lingard et al., 2013) and autonomy (Fink and Brayman, 2006), and leads to ‘‘scrutiny stress’’ (Lasalvia, 2011). This negatively impacts psychosocial and physiological health

Corresponding author: Aimee Maxwell, Faculty of Education, Monash University, 29 Ancora Imparo Way, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia. Email: [email protected]

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Educational Management Administration & Leadership

(Dewa et al., 2009; Kuper and Marmot, 2003), reciprocally affecting job performance and satisfaction (De Nobile and McCormick, 2010; Johnson et al., 2005). When school principals’ wellbeing declines, their ability to significantly impact school functioning, student engagement and whole-school wellbeing also declines (Hallinger and Heck, 1998; Leithwood et al., 2008; Ten Bruggencate et al., 2012). The considerable job demands experienced by school principals (Riley and Langan-Fox, 2013; Friedman, 2002; Phillips et al., 2007) include such diverse tasks as managing staff, organising budgets and providing strategic organisational focus alongside high stakes testing (Billot, 2003; Clarke, 2006; Lingard et al., 2013). Various studies have shown that these demands can be perceived as stressful, via the influence of multiple variables; environmental, organisational, individual and demographic (Boyland, 2011; De Nobile and McCormick, 2010; Friedman, 2002; Phillips et al., 2007). Further, chronic stress leads to feelings of burnout, affecting job performance, satisfaction and the motivation to remain in the role. School principals continuously meet multiple stakeholders at different developmental levels: children, adult employees, peers, parents and supervisors/employers; all of whom may sometimes display extremely high levels of emotional arousal. This is emotionally demanding. To keep a school running effectively, they must also be sensitive to the needs of all these groups, balance competing objectives and be able to switch seamlessly between stakeholder interactions, while continuously managing the impression others have of them (Berkovich and Eyal, 2015). This requires a great deal of emotional labour. In the following section we consider two of these important components – emotional demands and emotional labour – and their impact on burnout and job satisfaction.

Emotional demands School principals are required to present a controlled and calm face to all stakeholders while maintaining a balance between caring and managing (Berkovich and Eyal, 2015; Blackmore, 2010; Day et al., 2001; Eacott and Norris, 2014). However, some of the more stressful challenges faced by principals are those that are accompanied by high emotional demands. Of the five main sources of stress experienced by the principals identified by Gmelch and Swent (1984), two involved high emotional demands; interpersonal relations and intrapersonal conflicts. Likewise, Friedman (2002) reported that interactions with staff and parents affected burnout levels more than role overload, while Poirel et al. (2012) found that interpersonal stress sources were second only to administrative constraints. School principals experience the full gamut of emotions in their work; responding to their own and others’ emotions is a central part of the role (Beatty, 2000; Berkovich and Eyal, 2015; Blackmore, 1996; Crawford, 2009; James and Vince, 2001; Rajah et al., 2011; Zikhali and Perumal, 2015). For example, principals are expected to appropriately decide when to suppress or amplify negative emotion when confronted with students or teachers who have transgressed rules, or amplify positive emotions; behaving calmly in the face of problems to which they may not know the solution, putting on a fake smile to influence others’ emotions and be positive for parents (Crawford, 2007; Rhodes and Greenway, 2010). The successful management of widespread education reforms that demand compliance (for example, decentralisation, along with increased high stakes testing and accountability) could also be emotionally burdensome (Crawford, 2007; Lingard et al., 2013). Moreover, there is a dominant ‘‘display rule’’ (Zapf, 2002) pressuring school leaders to manage personal emotional responses so as to express their most rational selves (Berkovich and


Maxwell and Riley: Emotional demands, emotional labour and occupational outcomes

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Eyal, 2015). Taking a critical cultural perceptive, these changes to the educational milieu in Australia and similar western countries in recent times, for example, the dominance of a rational masculine discourse (Hofstede, 2001) and the pressures of market reforms (Ball, 2012; Lingard et al., 2013), further justify the focus on this aspect of school leadership. It is, therefore, likely that principals in the current study will report high levels of emotional demands, which in turn will predict poor occupational functioning; surviving rather than thriving in the role.

Emotional labour Emotional Labour (EL) is generally described by two core processes: surface acting (SA), which encompasses both the inhibition and manufacturing of emotions; and deep acting (DA), which is considered an extension of true emotions, aligning one’s real emotions to the situation (Grandey, 2000, 2015; Hochschild, 1983). SA has two components: hiding or down regulating felt emotions and faking false feelings (Brotheridge and Taylor, 2006; Lee and Brotheridge, 2011, Mann, 1999). Acting is thought to cause emotional dissonance, which can affect wellbeing (Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987; Zapf, 2002). DA involves attentional deployment and cognitive change, while SA is aligned with response modulation (Grandey, 2000; Gross, 1998). Therefore, the outcomes associated with EL vary according to the type of EL performed. Deep acting. Mixed effects have been found regarding DA. For example, personal accomplishment has demonstrated positive (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002), negative (Na¨ring et al., 2006) and no significant associations (Lee et al., 2010) with DA. When people reported using DA>SA, it positively predicted job performance (Hu¨lsheger and Schewe, 2011) and truncated emotional exhaustion up to one year later (Philipp and Schu¨pbach, 2010). In a meta-analysis of EL, DA had no generalisable significant relationships with negative occupational outcomes (Hu¨lsheger et al., 2011) though Grandey et al. (2013) did find an unusual positive association between DA (and SA) and job satisfaction in college students and Taiwanese salespeople. Surface acting. Grandey (2000) posited a model in which physiological stress theories could account for the outcomes of SA, assuming that the cognitive and motivational demands induce job strain (Demerouti et al., 2002). In support of this, Gross (2002) and Harris (2001) found that emotional suppression increased cardiovascular activation. The negative outcomes of SA may also be attributable to self-perceived inauthenticity or overloading personal resources from persistent modification of emotional expression (Grandey, 2000; Grandey et al., 2012; Hu¨lsheger and Schewe, 2011). Positive associations between SA and poor outcomes such as burnout and declining job satisfaction, psychological and physical health are well established (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Kinman et al., 2011a; Pugliesi, 1999; Totterdell and Holman, 2003). For instance, emotional exhaustion (a facet of burnout) has been associated with SA in physicians (Lee et al., 2010) and teachers (Na¨ring et al., 2012), while the use of SA predicted increases in psychological strain after two months in trainee teachers (Hu¨lsheger et al., 2010). Hiding emotions is correlated with emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation in service sector employees (Bayram et al., 2012), and emotional exhaustion in doctors. However, only faking correlated with depersonalisation in doctors (Lee et al., 2010). To summarise, EL is used to manage internal emotions and manufacture external expressions of emotions to specifically match organisational norms, expectations and demands (Diefendorff and Gosserand, 2003). It is performed to elicit appropriate responses in clients, customers or other


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stakeholders to achieve, or comply with, organisational aims. For example, school leaders use EL for ‘‘impression management’’ (Rhodes and Greenway, 2010). Its use in educational leadership is associated with: ‘‘macro- and micro-contextual factors’’ including gender relations or lack of supervisor support; ‘‘leadership role factors’’ such as loneliness; and ‘‘mission-related factors’’ such as ongoing experiences of social injustice (Berkovich and Eyal, 2015). Other caring professions such as nurses (Bartram et al., 2012), healthcare professionals (Grandey et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2010), teachers and childcare workers (Lee and Brotheridge, 2011; Na¨ring et al., 2006; Schutz et al., 2009; Yilmaz et al., 2015), aspirant school leaders (Gallant and Riley, 2013) and the clergy (Kinman et al., 2011a) have all demonstrated differing levels of EL. For the current study we sought to ascertain whether school principals’ levels of emotional demands predicted their use of EL strategies. We hypothesise that emotional demands will be high and will predict an increased use of EL strategies.

Burnout Burnout is a multi-dimensional ‘‘ill-being’’ concept, defined as a state of emotional exhaustion with follow-on and/or corresponding effects of depersonalisation and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment due to protracted experiences of workplace stress (Federici and Skaalvik, 2012; Lee et al., 2010; Maslach, 2003; Maslach and Jackson, 1986). Occupational stress theories posit that burnout results from the combination of prolonged demands and/or effort and limited or over-used resources (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Bakker et al., 2010; Hobfoll, 1989; Karasek, 1979; Lazarus, 1991). Studies of burnout across occupations and countries have demonstrated links with poor job performance, and physical and emotional wellbeing (Maslach et al., 2001). Emotional exhaustion is the first phase of burnout and has been suggested to be the central component of the syndrome (Bakker et al., 2003; Maslach, 2003), and educational leaders are more likely to indicate burnout as emotional exhaustion than either of the other facets (Combs and Edmonson, 2010). Further, significant negative associations have been found between SA and emotional exhaustion in teachers (Yilmaz et al., 2015). Recently, Grandey and Gabriel (2015) suggested that investigating the effects of EL through the lens of ill-being (as burnout) was limited and that whole-person wellbeing ought to be assessed too. We have addressed this concern in the current study. Leaders across industries report EL and burnout levels similar to those recorded for ‘‘people work’’ occupations, such as nurses and social workers (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002), and leaders in managerial roles comparatively perform more SA than workers in non-managerial roles (Sloan, 2012). Humphrey et al. (2008) reviewed EL leadership literature, finding that leaders use EL more frequently and with more variation than service workers. They postulated that the successful management of both one’s own and others’ moods could enhance a leader’s effectiveness, while noting negative effects such as emotional exhaustion. Little research into EL in leaders has been performed (Gooty et al., 2010; Haver et al., 2013; Humphrey, 2012). We hypothesise that SA-Hiding and SA-Faking will be positively associated with burnout and negatively associated with wellbeing.

Job satisfaction Job satisfaction, commonly used as a key indicator of employee wellbeing (Page and VellaBrodrick, 2009), is defined as the positive emotional regard one holds for one’s job (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2010). Across multiple professions, low job satisfaction is related to declines in



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physical health and wellbeing (Johnson et al., 2005). Facets of SA have consistent negative relationships with job satisfaction. Faking was found to have a significant negative relationship with job satisfaction in a mixed group of public service workers including managers and teachers (Hsieh et al., 2012). Hiding and Faking combined had negative correlations with job satisfaction in academic and administrative university staff (Pugliesi, 1999), nurses and child-care workers (Seery and Corrigall, 2009), teachers (Kinman et al., 2011b) and the clergy (Kinman et al., 2011a). We hypothesise that SA-Hiding and SA-Faking will be negatively associated with job satisfaction. The relationship between DA and job satisfaction is less clear. One meta-analysis of the effects of EL revealed consistent moderate negative correlations between job satisfaction and SA (Hu¨lsheger and Schewe, 2011), but no significant relationship between DA and job satisfaction. However, another meta-analysis found the same moderate negative relationships between SA and job satisfaction, but contrarily found a small positive effect of DA on job satisfaction (Wang et al., 2011). We will explore the relationship between DA and job satisfaction in this study with no directional hypothesis.

Empirical investigation Research aims We could find no research that specifically measured EL or determined the separate contributions of hiding and faking emotions to burnout, wellbeing or job satisfaction in school principals, prompting the current study. We aimed to identify the extent of emotional demands placed on leaders, assess the types and amounts of EL they reported using, measure the positive and negative impacts of EL strategies, and model these relationships. The hypothesised model is shown in Figure 1 below.

Methodology and participants This study is part of a larger, on-going longitudinal project, which began annual data collection from school principals in 2011. The background to the study, entire question set and progress reports are available at [www.principalhealth.org/au]. A representative sample of full-time school principals (N ¼ 1320; 51.8% female, 48.2% male) was drawn from three parallel governance sectors (Government, Catholic and Independent), across all states and year levels, in Australia. Ages ranged from 26 to 73 years (M ¼ 52.90, SD ¼ 6.78). Years of experience in leadership roles ranged from 0 to 43 years (M ¼ 14.90, SD ¼ 7.28).

Data collection Data was collected using an online survey. Web-based surveys produce sound data when used on target populations and/or when driven by non-consumer needs (Ganassali, 2008); therefore, no monetary reimbursements were provided for participation. Careful survey design helps ameliorate common method bias (CMB) when independent data sources are not available (Favero and Bullock, 2015). To this end, issues concerning CMB were addressed ex-ante by separating scales of interest within the larger survey (Favero and Bullock, 2015) and by the use of different scale anchors for question sets (Podsakoff et al., 2012). Further, the respondents were aware that honest answers were required to assist with future job design and were provided with detailed individual wellbeing reports upon completion. These motivating factors can diminish the potential effects of CMB (Podsakoff et al., 2012).


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Figure 1. Hypothesised model. Absence of a line implies no hypothesised significant effect.

Respondents were invited into the study via their specific professional occupational organisations. Upon completion of the survey, a detailed, personalised report was made available to each participant. The total number of participants in the entire dataset was 2084, representing *20% of Australia’s school principals. Of these, 539 participants had registered and completed the survey for the first time, and 1545 completed the survey for the second year (75.4% response rate to the recontact invitation). Only data from respondents in full-time employment, as the overall school leader, were used to create a homogenous group of leaders for analysis (N ¼ 1320).

Measures Four of the scales (emotional demands, quantitative demands, burnout and job satisfaction) were drawn from the revised Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ-II: Pejtersen et al., 2010b). The COPSOQ-II scales have good reliability and validity (Bjorner and Pejtersen, 2010; Pejtersen et al., 2010b; Rugulies et al., 2010. See Tables 1 and 2 for Cronbach alphas and descriptive statistics). Emotional demands were measured with four items: for example, ‘‘Is your work emotionally demanding?’’ Two questions were measured on a five-level Likert scale where the response options ranged from ‘‘Always’’ to ‘‘Not at all’’. The other two items were also measured on five-level Likert scales with different anchors ‘‘To a very large extent’’ and ‘‘To a very small extent’’. Quantitative demands was measured to account for workload, which has previously been seen to affect outcomes. It was measured with four items: for example, ‘‘Do you have enough time for your worktasks?’’ All questions were measured on a five-level Likert scale where the response options ranged from ‘‘Always’’ to ‘‘Never/Hardly ever’’. One item was reverse scored.



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Table 1. Descriptive statistics for the independent and dependent variables; population comparisons where available. Scale Emotional demandsa Quantitative demandsa Job satisfactiona Burnouta Wellbeingb SA-Hiding SA-Faking Deep Acting

Principals M (SD) General population M (SD) 69.54 59.44 74.47 55.95 79.24 3.27 2.79 2.52

(16.35) (19.31) (18.43) (21.22) (9.61) (0.69) (0.83) (0.85)

40.7 (24.30) 40.2 (20.5) 65.30 (18.20) 34.10 (18.20) 81.04 (12.71) – – –

Teachers: Primary/ Secondary M Managers M 69 / 48 48 / 39 63 / 64 39 / 36 – – – –

47 49 73 28 – – – –

Note: Comparison groups have different numbers. In this study N ¼ 1320. a All the COPSOQ-II samples are from the Danish validation study: Population N ¼ 3517; primary school teachers n ¼ 120; secondary school teachers n ¼ 25; managers n ¼ 107. b Australian Wellbeing sample N ¼ 2731.

Table 2. Correlations between all variables and scale reliabilities.

1. SA-Faking 2. SA-Hiding 3. Deep Acting 4. Emotional demands 5. Job satisfaction 6. Burnout 7. Wellbeing 8. Quantitative demands 9. Age 10. Male 11. Years of experience

1

2

3

.91 .62** .50** .42** .28** .35** .32** .28** .08** .05 .07**

.91 .36** .44** .31** .39** .38** .32** .08** .00 .06*

.90 .28** .16** .21** .22** .17** .06* .03 .01

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

.79 .27** .84 .48** .38** .91 .36** .53** .59** .93 .38** .30** .46** .36** .79 .09** .11** .19** .09** .07** .09** .09** .06* .02 .10** .09** .03 .04 .09** .02 .04 .45** .23**

Note: Scale alphas are on the cross diagonal. **p < .01 (2-tailed). *p < .05 (2-tailed).

Burnout was measured using four items, which relate directly to the Emotional Exhaustion subscale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach et al., 1996). An example item is ‘‘How often have you been emotionally exhausted?’’ All items had the same five Likert-scale response options ranging from ‘‘All the time’’ to ‘‘Not at all’’. Job satisfaction was measured using four items, each beginning with the stem ‘‘Regarding your work in general. How pleased are you with . . . ’’, followed by four options. An example option was ‘‘your job as a whole, everything taken into consideration?’’. Items had the same four Likert-scale response options ranging from ‘‘Very satisfied’’ (100) to ‘‘Very unsatisfied’’ (0). Wellbeing was measured using the Assessment of Quality of Life scale (AQoL-8D: Richardson et al., 2013). The AQoL-8D has 35 items and covers eight dimensions such as coping, relationships, self-worth, mental health and happiness. Items have between four and six response levels.


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The AQoL-8D has good internal consistency and reliability (a ¼ 0.96) (Richardson et al., 2013. See Table 2 for scale reliabilities). Emotional labour. Three scales (SA-Faking, SA-Hiding; DA) were each measured with three items from the Emotional Labour Scale – Revised which has good reliability (ELS-R: Brotheridge and Lee, 2003; Lee and Brotheridge, 2011). All items had the stem, ‘‘On an average day at work, how frequently do you . . . ’’, and the five response levels ranged from ‘‘Never’’ to ‘‘Always’’. An example SA-Hiding question was ‘‘Hide my true feelings about a situation’’. An example SAFaking item was ‘‘Show emotions that I don’t feel’’. An example DA item was ‘‘Really try to feel the emotions you have to show as part of your job’’ (see Table 2 for scale reliabilities).

Results Preliminary analyses As all dependent and independent measures were collected via the same survey, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) marker test was initially applied to assess the effects of common method bias (Williams et al., 2010). Another COPSOQ-II scale from the survey ‘‘Social responsibility’’ was chosen as a marker variable, as it had the fewest theoretical links to the substantive variables. The scale comprised three questions regarding levels of discrimination (race/religion, age and health) in the workplace (a ¼ 0.83, M ¼ 76.28, SD ¼ 23.63). As per Williams et al. (2010), a set of increasingly constrained CFA models were estimated to see if the marker variable would have relationships with the variables of interest, even though there was no theoretical reason to think it would. This tests how much the data is affected by the common method of administration. Chi-square difference testing established that the marker variable only loaded on three items and that the common method accounted for 0.36% of the variance. Thus, this test suggests that the effect of common method bias in the study is negligible.

Descriptive analyses The first aim of the study was to identify the extent of emotional demands in school principals. Descriptive statistics and comparisons with general population norms for the COPSOQ-II and wellbeing variables are presented in Table 1. Bonferroni-adjusted independent t-tests were conducted to compare the scores in this study with general population norms from the COPSOQ II. As it can be seen in Table 1, the participants in this study reported significantly higher levels of emotional demands (t4835, 39.86, p < .01), quantitative demands (t4835, 29.53, p < .01) and burnout (t4835, 15.56, p < .01) compared to COPSOQ II norms. However, they also reported higher levels of job satisfaction (t4835, 35.49, p < .01). Limited comparisons can be made by occupational groups as only group means are available from the COPSOQ II validation study (Det Nationale Forskningscenter for Arbejdsmiljø, 2011; Pejtersen et al., 2010b). Note that the comparison group sizes vary but all completed the same questionnaire. School principals report emotional demands at a level similar to that of primary school teachers, but higher than managers and secondary school teachers. Their quantitative demands and burnout levels are higher than in all comparison groups. They report job-satisfaction levels similar to those of managers and higher than all teachers. Minimally Important Score Differences (MID) have been established for the COPSOQ II scales. MIDs are as follows: emotional demands ¼ 12.9, quantitative demands ¼ 8.6, job satisfaction ¼ 8.0 and burnout ¼ 9.1 (Pejtersen et al., 2010a). For each scale, the mean differences compared to the general working population exceed the



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Figure 2. The research model; significant unstandardised b estimates displayed only. **p < .01 (2-tailed), *p < .05 (2-tailed). Absence of a line indicates no significant relationship.

recommended MID, indicating that the differences are of practical significance. The wellbeing measure does not have occupationally specific information, but principals demonstrate significantly lower wellbeing than the general population (t4049, 4.55, p < .01). The second aim of the study was to assess the types and amounts of EL reported by school principals. It can be seen in Table 1 that principals report hiding their emotions more than either faking emotions or deep acting. Deep acting was the least-used strategy. Pearson correlations were calculated between all variables (see Table 2). As it can be seen in Table 2, strong positive correlations were found between SA-Faking and SA-Hiding, and between SA-Faking and DA. SA-Hiding and DA have a moderate positive correlation. Further, there were significant relationships between all three EL variables and each dependent variable. Increases in SA-Faking, SA-Hiding and DA correlated with increases in burnout, and decreases in wellbeing and job satisfaction. The correlations between years of experience and the variables of interest were very small or not significant in the matrix, so only age, gender and quantitative demands were controlled in the subsequent analysis.

Regression analysis The final aim of the study was to model the predictive relationships between emotional demands and the three EL facets – burnout, wellbeing and job satisfaction. Simultaneous estimation structural equation modelling (SEM) using Mplus version 7.11 was performed to estimate the relationships between emotional demands, EL and outcomes. A maximum likelihood parameter estimator that is robust to violations of normality (MLM estimator) was used (Boomsma, 2000; Muthe´n and Muthe´n, 1998–2012). Unstandardised estimates were reported to ensure scale meaning was


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retained; note that measures were scored on different scales (emotional demands, burnout, job satisfaction and wellbeing: 0–100. EL variables: 1–5). After estimation, it was seen that the proposed model had good fit (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ¼ .04, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) ¼ .97, Tucker Lewis Index (TLI) ¼ .96, w2 ¼ 887.35; df ¼ 248, p