The Comparative Analysis of a Structural Impact of Emotional Labor, Exhaustion, and Customer Orientation of Nurse

Abstract

This study comparatively analyzed structural impacts of emotional labor on customer orientation and emotional exhaustion as a mediator. The study participants are nurses working in a private general hospital and a public general hospitals located in North Gyeongsang providence. The mean scores on the sub-categories of customer orientation revealed that friendliness and understanding were higher among nurses working in the public hospital whereas relationship was higher among nurses working in the private hospital. Next, the emotional labor of nurses showed negative impact on their customer orientation in both private and public hospitals. As emotional labor increased, emotional exhaustion increased for the cases in the public hospitals only. Additionally, only among nurses working in the public hospitals, emotional exhaustion had influence on customer orientation as the mediator effect. Considering the differences in the working environment of two hospitals, hospital administrators and manager could improve on the employee welfare and benefit to enhance emotional stability in the private hospital. For the public hospital, emotional labor needs to be taken into account in the process of selection and develop educational programs to shift emotional labor from surface acting to deep acting.