The effect of employees' career aspiration on the relationship between surface acting and burnout

Daphne de Vré | 11302895 Thesis Seminar Business Administration University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Daphne Dekker 25.06.2019

The effect of employees’ career aspiration on the relationship

between surface acting and burnout

Statement of originality

This document is written by Daphne de Vré who declares to take full responsibility for the content of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in

creating it.

The faculty of Economic and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

Table of content

Decreasing the chance on burnout ... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Methodology ... 14 Sample ... 14 Procedure ... 14 Measures ... 15 Analytical plan ... 16 Results ... 17

Descriptives and correlations ... 17

Assumptions ... 18

Test hypothesis ... 19

Discussion ... 20

Limitations and recommendations for further research ... 20

Conclusion ... 22 References ... 23 Appendix A ... 26 Appendix B ... 27 Appendix C ... 28 Appendix D ... 29 Appendix E ... 35 Appendix F ... 36 Appendix G ... 37

Appendix I ... 39 Appendix J ... 40

Abstract

Employees go to great lengths to satisfy the customer. But always trying to do this suppresses real feelings which can eventually lead to burnout. Research shows that mindset, in the form of career aspiration, may affect this relationship. This research will contribute to science as there is little to no information known about the influence of a person’s mindset on the relationship between surface acting and burnout. The goal of this paper is to see whether the already existing relationship between surface acting and burnout can be moderated by an employee’s career aspiration. More specifically, I hypothesize there is an interaction effect on the relationship between an employee’s mindset and their chance on a burnout, such that employees who perform surface acting and have high career aspiration have more chance on getting a burnout than employees who perform surface acting and have low career aspiration. Results from survey with 98 respondents show Hypothesis 1 is not supported as there is no significant effect on the relationship between surface acting and burnout.

Introduction

“The customer is always right” is a statement often mentioned within the service industry. Employees go to great lengths to satisfy the customer (Grandey, Dickter & Sin, 2004). However, always trying to satisfy the customer is less favourable for the emotional wellbeing of employees. Constantly having to smile and having to suppress negative emotions while working, which is called surface acting, can cause stress which can eventually lead to burnouts (Grandey, Dickter & Sin, 2004).

Burnouts become more and more common and since burnouts are harmful for an organization, something has to be done about it (Jackson & Schuler, 1983). According to several researches there is an already existing relationship between surface acting and burnout namely that surface acting positively affects burnout among employees (Kim, 2008; Hochschild, 2012; Lee & Ashforth, 1996; Zapf et al., 2001). Yet there are still things unknown about some variables that could strengthen or weaken the relationship between surface acting and burnout. Lee and Ashforth (1996) mention that the demand and resources regarding job burnout have often been mentioned and that their relation to coping with stress requires more study. An example is: studying whether demands could be seen as possible gains instead of losses. Seeing demands as opportunities can be seen as something which is done as part of career aspiration (Lee & Ashforth, 1996). Career aspiration is a kind of mindset and the reason this might be interesting to look at is because this can show whether changing your mindset helps by reducing the change on a burnout. This makes it look like you can adjust your mindset positively to reduce the chance on a burnout while Glass & McKnight (1996) mention that a chance on a burnout is possibly increased by a discrepancy between mindset, in this case career aspiration, and performance. So, a greater career aspiration means a larger discrepancy between career aspiration and performance and thus a higher chance on a burnout. The reason behind the thought that career aspiration might enhance the chance on a burnout is that employees set too high demands which cannot be met constantly and thus result in stressful reactions (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter, 2001). So, these thoughts contradict each other, which gives cause to research the actual effect of high career aspiration on the relationship between surface acting and burnout.

Therefore, the goal of this paper is to see whether the already existing relationship between surface acting and burnout can be moderated by an employee’s career aspiration. This research will contribute to science as there is little to no information known about the influence of a person’s mindset on the relationship between surface acting and burnout (Lee & Ashforth,

1996). In this case mindset will be specified to career aspiration as career aspiration is seen as a kind of mindset (Chan et al., 2012). The outcome of this study can provide new insights for organizations on how managers can influence an employee’s mindset so that this person is less affected by performing surface acting and thus has less chance of getting a burnout.

The research question of this study is as follows: “What is the effect of an employee’s

career aspiration on the relationship between surface acting and burnout?” First, a theoretical

framework will be constructed where the different variables used in this study will be explained and their relation to each other is shown in a conceptual model. Thereafter, the research design will explain how the research is done so that the research question can be answered.

Theoretical framework

In this part of the research a brief overview will be given of previous research on burnout in relation to surface acting. The variables stated in the conceptual model, which is shown below (See Figure 1), will be described together with their relation to each other. This is followed by a hypothesis that will help to answer the research question.

Figure 1 - Conceptual model that shows the relation between surface acting, burnout and career aspiration.

Surface acting

Emotional labour can be defined as managing emotional expressions on account of the display rules of organizations (Cheung & Lun, 2015). Display rules are rules, set by an organization, which signify the emotions employees should show and the emotions they should not show while having a service interaction (Rathi, 2013). Emotional labour can be conceptualized into three strategies: surface acting, deep acting and the expression of naturally felt emotions, also called authenticity (Cheung & Lun, 2015; Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Arnold et al., 2015). Surface acting is knowingly faking certain expressions without feeling this emotion or trying to feel this emotion. An example is faking a smile while being in a bad mood or having to deal with a difficult customer (Brotheridge & Lee, 2002). Deep acting is showing the emotions that are expected from you by trying to actually feel this emotion inside so that you do not have to fake this emotion (Rathi, 2013). Acting is related to stress due to the fact that acting eventually can lead to the detachment of one’s real feelings, which is mainly described as depersonalization (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002). Depersonalization is one of the three burnout dimensions, which are explained later, and is caused by emotional dissonance (Cheung & Cheung, 2013). Emotional dissonance is a difference in displayed emotion and genuinely felt emotion (Hochschild, 2012). This dissonance is greater when using surface acting since the

deep acting. Deep acting namely changes the focus of personal thoughts towards thoughts that should fit with the situation based on the organization’s display rules (Montgomery et al., 2006). So, this does not mean you do not genuinely feel the emotions you express because of deep acting, you just shifted the focus as you felt different before. With surface acting the emotions are not genuinely felt which causes a great discrepancy between the felt and displayed emotions (Cheung & Lun, 2015). Besides having a greater discrepancy when using surface acting, Cheung and Lun (2015) mention that deep acting is not related to burnout. Zhang and Zhu (2008) even say deep acting has a positive effect on burnout, as it decreases the emotional dissonance which is seen as the major source of burnout. However, other research shows that deep acting does have a negative effect on burnout, only this effect is smaller with deep acting than with surface acting (Arnold et al., 2015; Mann & Cowburn, 2005; Montgomery et al., 2006). Brotheridge & Grandey (2002) see deep acting as a healthier way to deal with customer demands because the discrepancy between real and displayed emotions is smaller and therefore it is less linked to burnout. For these reasons, this research will focus on surface acting rather than deep acting.

Consequences of surface acting, which will be discussed more in detail in the next section, are lower job satisfaction and higher job burnout (Cheung & Lun, 2015). So, what is the reason people engage in surface acting? As said before, a reason for surface acting are the display rules set by an organization (Cheung & Lun, 2015). For determining display rules, an organization is influenced by general norms, which are ways to behave, in this case showing or hiding certain emotions, that are perceived or expected to be normal (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989). As part of most service jobs, it is required to display certain emotions that are desired. This is to please customers, as customer satisfaction leads to greater profit (Morris, 1998). Another reason can be to remain objective. This is so that an employee can really focus on the customer and its problem or request, or what the customer is there for, without involving possible feelings which may not benefit the service interaction. A well-known example in this case is a lawyer interacting with its client, as the lawyer should maintain fairness without feeling guilty for the possible crime the client committed (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). A third reason people engage in surface acting is because it increases self-efficacy and task effectiveness (Zhang & Zhu, 2008). Self-efficacy is a person’s belief in their natural competence to achieve goals (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). If the employee’s expression or emotion is perceived as sincere by the customer, it can improve self-efficacy. An employee can recognize if a customer perceives the shown emotions as sincere by noticing the service interaction goes smoothly. This

1989). Self-efficacy itself can again change the amount of effort a person is willing to give. When a service interaction was perceived as positive, the higher self-efficacy causes the employee to work harder and endure longer when experiencing difficult in the future. When the service interaction was perceived as negative, the employee might avoid the task in the future because of a lower self-efficacy (Schunk, 1991). Therefore, task-effectiveness depends on someone’s level of self-efficacy.

The reasons above also apply to deep acting. Self-efficacy is even perceived to be higher when performing deep acting as opposed to surface acting (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002). This is because deep acting concerns treating the customer as someone who deserves an authentic expression, which can increase positive feedback from the customer. However, the difference and also the reason why people preferable perform surface acting instead of deep acting is still unclear (Ozcelik, 2013). According to Ashforth and Humphrey (1993) deep acting takes more psychic effort. However, Brotheridge and Lee (2002) state that surface acting takes more effort than deep acting as it demands more investment of resources, which can be seen as the opposite Ashforth and Humphrey (1993) state, as psychic effort is a kind of resource used when performing emotional labour. However, a lack of resources can also be seen as lack of time, lack of information and lack of critical tools (Maslach, 2003). Little research has been done about this, so it remains unclear what the reason is that surface acting is performed preferably over deep acting. But it is stated that managers try to get employees to engage more in deep acting instead of surface acting, as this is a healthier way of interacting with customers (Ozcelik, 2013).

Burnout

As told in the previous section, job burnout is a consequence of surface acting (Cheung & Lun, 2015). Burnout is seen as an indication of an increasing inability for employees to manage their emotions when having a service interaction (Zapf et al., 2001). Surface acting is a form of managing emotions. This managing is put to the test when having to deal with customers that are dissatisfied or even verbally aggressive. As result the self-efficacy can decrease, as the service interaction is perceived as negative. Customers get dissatisfied when the service interaction is not as expected (Jones & Sasser, 1995). This can be caused because of general norms. General norms are formed through customer’s expectations and vary across cultures, but it also differs between industries, organizations or even organizational roles (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). So, before an interaction takes place between the customer and an employee,

the customer has expectations of how the interaction will go. However, as this is different among different organizations, not every organization can meet the expectations. This makes customers dissatisfied (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). Not meeting the expectation can be because a mistake is made, which maybe rarely occurs, or this can be because the customer has had a bad day which makes certain things appear less good and thus do not meet their expectations (Jones & Sasser, 1995). And, as told before, when a service interaction is perceived as negative, the employee prefers to avoid the task in the future (Schunk, 1991). However, it can be the case that an employee is not able to avoid the task, because this is an important part of his or her job function for instance. This causes the possibility to experience such a negative experience more often which results in experiencing the task as stressful because of increasing arousal and apprehensiveness (Grandey et al., 2004). So, when because of surface acting it is attempted to show the right emotion while the actual feeling is stressful, the emotional dissonance increases which causes it to take more and more effort to show the right emotion. This increase in effort it takes to perform such as task can result in emotional exhaustion (Brotheridge & Lee, 2002).

As told before, burnout consists of three dimensions and emotional exhaustion is one of them. The other two are named differently among different researches but they all have the same definition and in this research they are specified as lack of personal accomplishment and depersonalization (Maslach, 2003; Lee & Ashforth, 1996; Zhang & Zhu, 2008; Cheung & Cheung, 2015; Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter, 2001; Zapf et al., 2001). Emotion exhaustion represents the basic stress response. However, burnout is not only about the stress experience. It is about how the employee responds to the job, which can be linked with personal accomplishment, and how the employee responds to him-or herself, which can be linked to depersonalization (Maslach, 2003). So, burnout is caused by lower self-efficacy, higher stress level and greater discrepancy between mindset and performance. It can also be caused by too much work, but this is related to surface acting, namely that more work causes more surface acting.

Burnout is a response to interpersonal stressors (Leiter & Maslach, 1988) and it means there is a low sense of efficacy at work (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002). Two consequences of this can be the effect on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and the effect on employment. Organizational citizenship behavior is about people’s engagements in voluntary activities to improve their task performance (Cheung & Cheung, 2011). Burnout will decrease the OCB. Also, burnout is described as a sense of incompetence at work (Marek, Schaufeli &

Maslach, 2017). Managers might eventually see those employee’s actions as incompetence at work which may result in resignation.

The relationship between surface acting and burnout can be impaired or enhanced when introducing a moderator. An example of a moderator is lower job involvement, which affects the relationship between surface acting and burnout and thus decreases the chance of a burnout when performing surface acting (Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000). Lee and Ashforth (1996) mentioned mindset as moderator as a possible future research which is an interesting thing to look at as it is about the thinking of people and how perhaps this can be changed positively so that they benefit from an improved mindset as well as the customers.

Career aspiration

Having mindset as a moderator between surface acting and burnout is difficult as mindset is a broad term. Therefore, in this research mindset is specified as career aspiration. Career aspiration has been chosen, as in the introduction has been told, because Lee & Ashforth (1996) and Glass & McKnight (1996) show contradictions as to the effect of career aspiration on the chance of having a burnout. Namely Lee & Ashforth (1996) think that seeing demands as opportunities, so getting a more positive mindset, might decrease the chance on a burnout. This, according to Glass & McKnight, will only lead to a greater discrepancy between mindset and performance as mindset is increased and performance stays the same. And this discrepancy only causes a higher chance on burnout.

Career aspiration can be defined as life goals regarding a strong position or reputation at work (Roche & Haar, 2013). Career aspiration is believed to be a good quality to have as it shows a person’s desire for achieving high goals and this can be accompanied with a high vigor. This is also why it is one of a few items where managers look for when a person applies to that organization (Ozcelik, 2013). …

Moreover, career aspiration is measured on an ambition scale (Rothwell, Herbert & Rothwell, 2008), which is possible as there is little difference. Ambition is more related to the achievement of a strong position or reputation, while aspiration relates more to acceding in great things in life (Pediaa, 2018). The difference is desire, which is stronger in ambition than in aspiration, as with aspiration it is more of a wish for something in the future. However, this is a small difference and therefore the ambition scale (Rothwell, Herbert & Rothwell, 2008) is used to measure career aspiration.

Relation

This focus on career aspiration as moderator between surface acting and burnout is interesting as it might give newRE insights for organizations for decreasing the change on a burnout. Nowadays, managers in an organization generally choose new employees based on their skills, values and career objectives (Ozcelik, 2013). People with high motivation, including career aspiration, are seen as attractive new employees, because this is related to high motivation to accomplish things at work (Ozcelik, 2013). However, it might be the case that career aspiration positively affects the relation between surface acting and burnout. This is because people with high career aspiration often try to change their job settings so that they have more chance of achieving their goals. The problem with this is that some jobs do not lend itself to be changed to someone’s desires (Glass & McKnight, 1996). In the case that this person can also not avoid the task when perceiving it as negative, it results in perceiving the task as stressful which can lead to a burnout (Grandey et al., 2004).

So, the hypothesis is as follows: Hypothesis 1: There is an interaction effect on the

relationship between an employee’s mindset and their chance on a burnout, such that employees who perform surface acting and have high career aspiration have more chance on getting a burnout than employees who perform surface acting and have low career aspiration.

Methodology

For this study literature research is used together with data collection. The data for the study was collected via surveys.

Sample

I performed my analysis on the dataset received from the responses of the survey. This consisted of 137 responses. Some of the responses were inconsistent as the survey was not filled out completely by every respondent. This was the case with 39 of the responses. Therefore, those responses were deleted to avoid complexity.

The data that remained was used for further analyses (see Appendix A). This was a total of 98 responses. 60.2% of the respondents were female, with exception of one person under 18 years old and one person above 65 years old, the varying age of female respondents is between 18 and 64 years. The largest percentage (47.5%) of the female respondents belong to the age group 18 till 24 years. For the male respondents the varying in age is between 18 and 64 years, with the largest percentage (48.7%) of the male respondents in the age group of 18 till 24 years. The questions were answered by people that have or have been employed. So, people that indicated they are currently unemployed, answered the questions based on their last employment. 72.4% of the respondents is currently employed (see Appendix A). By including people that are not currently employed, it reduced the change of not including people that suffer or have suffered from a burnout, as those people may have quit their job because of their burnout.

Procedure

For this study convenience sampling was used: participants were sampled via personal contacts. With distribution the focus was more on finding respondents with a full-time employment.

A question was added to the survey where “service industry” is specified so that answers from respondents that work in the service industry could be compared with answers from respondents that do not work in the service industry. This is because it is assumed that people that work in the service industry are more likely to experience burnout as burnout is a response to interpersonal interactions (Leiter & Maslach, 1988). For the same reason the question “How often do you have customer interaction at work?” was added. To make sure to get a high response rate, the survey was made to be as effortless as possible. This was done by describing

participants were told the amount of time it would take to fill in the survey, which was estimated to be no more than five minutes. Filling in the survey was anonymous and there was not given a compensation. The data was collected over 8 days of time.

Measures

The variables used in this research are surface acting, burnout and career aspiration.

Surface acting is measured by the Emotional Labor Scale (Diefendorff, Croyle & Gosserand,

2005). This scale consists of seven items (see Appendix B), such as “I put on an act in order to deal with customers in an appropriate way” and “I fake a good mood when interacting with customers”. This variable is measured on a 7-point Likert-scale.

Burnout is measured by the amount of stress a person perceives. This is done by the Maslach

Burnout Inventory (MBI), from which has been focused on the emotional exhaustion scale (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). This scale consists of nine items (see Appendix B), such as “I feel emotionally drained from my work” and “I feel upset at the end of the workday”. This variable is measured on a 7-point frequency scale, where zero indicates that the person has never experienced a certain feeling. The burnout variable will also be measured with a 7-point intensity scale.

Career aspiration is measured by the Career Aspiration Scale (Rothwell, Herbert & Rothwell,

2008). This scale consists of six items (see Appendix B), such as “I am satisfied with the progress I have made meeting my goals for the development of new skills” and “I have clear goals for what I want to achieve in my life”. The last item “What I do in the future is not really important” is reverse-scored as the question was posed counter indicative. This variable is measured on a 5-point Likert-scale.

The reliability of surface acting, burnout and career aspiration is measured by using Cronbach alpha (see Appendix C). The Cronbach alpha for surface acting is .943, for burnout frequency and intensity it respectively is .932 and .950. Those numbers are higher than .80 which means the scales are reliable. For career aspiration the Cronbach alpha is .567 which is too low and means the scale is unreliable. However, for lack of better this scale has still been used for this research.

To rule out other possible effects on the hypothesis, some control variables are used for this research. These include the gender of the respondent (0 = female, 1 = male), their age (1 = under 18, 2 = 18-24, 3 = 25-34, 4 = 35-44, 5 = 45-54, 6 = 55-64, 7 = 65+), if the person is currently employed or not (0 = no, 1 = yes), if the person is working in the service industry or

not (0 = my job is not customer centric, 1 = my job is generally focused on service) and how often the respondent has customer interaction at work (1 = less than once a month, 2 = once a month, 3 = a few times a month, 4 = about once a week, 5 = a few times a week, 6 = every day). As for the gender, the survey provided a third option “prefer not to say” for which the box has not been checked by any respondent and therefore not included further in this research.

Analytical plan

To test Hypothesis 1, linear regression is used to test assumptions. Besides that, to test the hypothesis, PROCESS v3.2 by Hayes (2018) is used.

Results

In this section the results are shown and analyzed to accept or reject the hypothesis, which helps with answering the research question. Hypothesis 1 again is: There is an interaction

effect on the relationship between an employee’s mindset and their chance on a burnout, such that employees who perform surface acting and have high career aspiration have more chance on getting a burnout than employees who perform surface acting and have low career aspiration.

Descriptives and correlations

To answer Hypothesis 1, five control variables are used together with a dependent and independent variable and a moderator. The independent variable in this research is surface

acting and burnout is measured with both burnout frequency and burnout intensity. However,

as dependent variable only burnout intensity is used. Career aspiration is the moderator and the control variables are gender, age, currently employed, employed in service industry and

customer interaction frequency. Table 1 contains the mean, standard deviation and correlation

of all those variables.

Table 1 - Means, Standard Deviation and Correlations

Gender has a mean of .40 which means more female than man filled out the survey. The mean age lies in the age group of 25 till 34 years. Also, there are more people currently employed

(1.8152), while people generally perform more surface acting (M = 3.8338) and have high career aspiration (M = 3.9541).

Table 1 shows a positive strong correlation between surface acting and burnout

intensity (.513**), which means surface acting increases the change of a burnout. Another

strong positive correlation is between customer interaction frequency and employed in service

industry which means people that work in the service industry have more interaction with

customers. Also, there is a strong negative correlation between surface acting and age (-.421**), this implies that older people perform less surface acting than younger people. The table also shows that burnout is not dependent on gender as burnout intensity is negatively weakly correlated with gender (-.168). Lastly, burnout intensity and age have a negative moderate correlation (-.281**). The other variables are not correlated with another.

Assumptions

Before testing Hypothesis 1, the positive interaction effect of career aspiration and surface acting on the chance of getting a burnout, I checked whether the data suffices the assumptions of linear regression. For which I used linear regression.

Firstly, I checked for normality between the independent and dependent variable, and between the dependent variable and moderator (see Appendix D). I did this by checking the frequency distribution and P-P plot of those variables. Results showed a histogram with more or less a normal distribution. The P-P plot also shows a normality line which is more or less followed. Therefore, normality may be assumed.

Secondly, I checked for autocorrelation. The results showed a Durbin Watson of 2.126, this number is close to 2 which means the independent and dependent variable are autocorrelated (see Appendix E).

Thirdly, there was looked for a linear relationship. There is no linear relationship between surface acting and burnout as the points in the scatterplot do not closely resemble a straight line (see Appendix F).

Also, z-scores of the variables burnout intensity and surface acting were made to analyse if there were any outliers (see Appendix G). There were 5 numbers in the data of the respondents that were either higher than 1.96 or lower than -1.96, those numbers are outliers. 5 numbers out of a total of 98 compares with 5.10% which is roughly 5 percent, so the data is normally distributed, and no data had to be deleted.

Next, the data that was retrieved with linear regression shows a scatterplot. With analysing this scatterplot, it can be seen that there is no homoscedasticity, in this case there is heteroscedasticity (see Appendix D). So, the outcome of this research should be taken with caution.

Lastly, collinearity is not the case as the tolerance is .931 (>.20) and VIF is 1.074 (<5) (see Appendix H).

Test hypothesis

To test Hypothesis 1, the positive interaction effect of career aspiration and surface acting on the chance of getting a burnout, I used linear regression and PROCESS v3.2 by Hayes (2018).

First with using linear regression, block 1 contained the control variables; gender, age,

currently employed, employed in service industry and customer interaction frequency. Block

2 contained the same control variables, conjointly with the moderator: career aspiration and the independent variable surface acting. And lastly the dependent variable is still burnout

intensity. The results show an R squared of .194 in model 1 and .334 in model 2. The R

squared of model 2 is higher than the first model which means the model improved. 33.4% of the variance in career aspiration is explained by the model (see Appendix I). Together with a p-value of .000 (<0.5) it proves there is a significant relation between surface acting and career aspiration on burnout intensity.

Second, PROCESS v3.2 by Hayes (2018) is used to check the interaction effect (see Appendix J). The results showed in Table 2 do not support the hypothesis, as there is no significant interaction effect between surface acting and career aspiration on burnout intensity (b = .1005, se = .1522, t = .6605 p = .5107, 95% CI = [-.2018, .4028]).

Discussion

The intention of the research was to find an interaction effect between surface acting and career aspiration on burnout intensity. Based on the results, Hypothesis 1 is not supported. This means there is no significant relation found between surface acting and career aspiration on burnout intensity. Results showed a positive strong correlation between surface acting and burnout intensity, which means surface acting increases the change of a burnout, which is in line with several researches, which all state that surface acting has a larger negative effect on burnout than deep acting (Arnold et al., 2015; Mann & Cowburn, 2005; Montgomery et al., 2006). The strong positive correlation between customer interaction frequency and employed in service industry means that people who work in the service industry have more interaction with customers, which is a logical correlation. Following the results, Hypothesis 1 is not supported. This is because there is no significant relation found between surface acting and career aspiration on burnout intensity.

In practice managers should still be cautious when it comes to characteristics of people applying for a job for which they may or may not be hired. From this research it can be

concluded that career aspiration has no significant effect on the relationship between surface acting and burnout. This means that people that participate in surface acting and have high career aspiration do not have an increased chance on getting a burnout. However, future research should be done about career aspiration as this research might not be reliable in every aspect.

Limitations and recommendations for further research

This research might have some limitations for which the result has an insignificant outcome. One limitation might be the scale that is used to measure career aspiration. This is done with the Ambition Scale is, according to Rothwell, Herbert & Rothwell (2008), created by joining different items from different scales. This might have affected the reliability of the scale. Other factors that limited this study have to do with the survey distribution. The survey is distributed via convenience sampling, this means that the survey has been send to family and friends first. Most of them live in or near Amsterdam and most of them are students which explains the largest age group being 18 till 24 years. Also, people in this age group might not work as long as people in other age groups, which decreases the change of getting a burnout. However, this does not explain the strong negative correlation between surface acting and age. This namely means that older people perform less surface acting than younger people.

The reason for this should be looked into. Also, the survey itself might need small alterations to reduce the chance of people not exactly knowing what the question or answers mean. Namely, the questions in the survey were posed in English and distributed in and near Amsterdam which might cause unclarity for a few respondents. Next, people that have answered “no” on the question whether they are currently employed or not, may have not filled in the questions as correctly as if they were employed. On the other hand, when this group is not included this might cause a decrease in people that have or have had a burnout, since people that suffer or have suffered from a burnout might currently be unemployed. Lastly, the size of the sample is not significant. In a future research this should be increased. In this research this has been partly tried by doing a few things. The questions were posed as easy as possible with as few answer possibilities as possible. However, a few respondents stopped answering the questions when they came to the questions with a Likert-scale. To try to avoid this, halfway a progress bar was added so the respondents saw the progress they made on answering the questions. In a future research there should be looked into how this can be improved even more, perhaps with a clear introduction and respondents can have a chance on winning a gift card.

Conclusion

The research question as mentioned in the introduction is: “What is the effect of an

employee’s career aspiration on the relationship between surface acting and burnout?”. As

mentioned earlier, Hypothesis 1 is not supported. So, the answer to the research question and therefore to conclude this research is that career aspiration has no significant effect on the relationship between surface acting and burnout.

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Appendix B

Emotional labor strategy items

Surface acting

1. I put on an act in order to deal with customers in an appropriate way 2. I fake a good mood when interacting with customers

3. I put on a “show” or “performance” when interacting with customers 4. I just pretend to have the emotions I need to display for my job 5. I put on a “mask” in order to display the emotions I need for the job. 6. I show feelings to customers that are different from what I feel inside 7. I fake the emotions I show when dealing with customers.

Maslach Burnout Inventory

Emotional exhaustion

1. I feel emotionally drained from my work 2. I feel used up at the end of the workday

3. I feel fatigued when I get up in the morning and have to face another day on the job 4. Working with people all day is really a strain for me

5. I feel burned out from my work 6. I feel frustrated by my job

7. I feel I’m working too hard on my job

8. Working with people directly puts too much stress on me 9. I feel like I’m at the end of my rope

Career Aspiration Scale

(Rothwell, Herbert & Rothwell, 2008)

1. I want to be in a position to do mostly work I really like

2. I am satisfied with the progress I have made meeting my goals for the development of new skills.

3. I have clear goals for what I want to achieve in life 4. I regard myself as highly ambitious

5. I feel it is urgent that I get on with my career development 6. What I do in the future is not really important (R)

Appendix D