감정노동자의 이직의도에 미치는 유머와 유머선호도의 조절효과

Our purpose was to extend the Job Demands-Resources Model by including humor practices and individual humor preferences, job demands and job resources to predict burnout or job exhaustion and turnover intention. Influenced by dominant work JD-R model attributes employee well-being to the characteristics of work environments. However, studies on JD-R model have been restricted to work limited variables(autonomy, job complexity, social support, etc.) and, as a result, the role of humor practices has been neglected. The present studies uses organizational humor practices and individual humor preferences as resources variables in the model. The humor is an energizer and motivator in workplace as well as in daily life. By the way an attitudinal element or dimension that is likely to vary across individuals is the perceived consequences of humor at workplace. For example, some may view leaders’ or coworkers’ humor as a means of enhancing satisfaction and productivity, while others may see such behaviors as creating hinderance or a waste of time. * Professor, Department of Business Administration, Hongik University On the other hand, most employees working at emotional labor would be tired with work. While many people want their work to be satisfying, emotional labor reenforce workers to have smile face in front of clients. If their patience would be worn out, finally they quit easily their workplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether emotional exhaustion mediate the relationship between emotional labor and turnover intention, and whether the negative impact of emotional exhaustion on turnover intention is significantly lower for employees who experience greater levels of humor at work than it is for those experiencing lower levels of humor. A growing number of business consultants and academic writers would agree, arguing that humorous or joyful ambiance at work place for enhancing employee motivation and productivity, reducing stress, and increasing customer satisfaction. In support, recent analyses of many business company workers show that a fun work environment is one of the factors distinguishing superior performers from others. But, can this same philosophy be extended to another culture, korean business situation? It appears so. As noted above, there is no research to date wether there would be contributions of humor for the emotional workers’ turnover intention in emotional labor environment. Therefore, we predict as follows： 1-1：Degree of emotional labor will be positively related to employees’ emotional exhaustion. 1-2：Degree of emotional exhaustion will be positively related to employees’ turnover intention. 1-3：Emotional exhaustion will mediate the relationship between emotional labor and employees’ turnover intention. 2-1：Employees’ perception of humor practice will moderate the relationship between emotional exhaustion and employees’ turnover intention. 2-2：Individual humor propensity will be positively related to employees’ humor propensity. So, the negative effect of emotional exhaustion on turnover intention will be significantly weaker for those who perceive more practice of humor than it is for those who perceive less practice of humor at workplace. These effects of emotional labor and humor were analysed in the context of mediating and moderating role of the variables in workplace in a sample of 307 employees working in emotional labor. This study utilized a convenience sample drawn from various service working area. The sample consisted of emotional workers, that is cashiers in grand discount hypermarket, female service staff in airline company, medicines sales persons in pharmaceutical company, service men and women in call center, etc. Therefore, we believe they are an appropriate sample for assessing perceptions of emotional labor and humor practice, etc. Most of the respondents were female(72%) and high academically qualified. Although respondents ranged in age from 20 to upper 50, the most was younger than 30 years. About 65% of the sample consist of college graduate person. On average, they spent most of their work day interacting with clients or coping with their superiors. Results of hierarchical multiple regression showed that the greater the degree of experienced emotional labor, the greater the emotional exhaustion and that emotional exhaustion, in turn, influences turnover intention. Emotional exhaustion is widely regarded as the core component of job burnout and turnover intention. This has been found to be a common phenomenon in our research. The results also showed that attitude toward workplace humor practice influence the moderating impact of humor between emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. That is, the negative impact of emotional exhaustion on turnover intention was significantly weaker for those workers who experience greater levels of humor at work than it is for workers who experience low levels of humor. In addition, the employees’ positive attitude toward humor could reenforced the moderating effect to the relation between emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. One of the most significant contributions of this research is our finding that experiencing humors in the workplace can lessen the impact of emotional exhaustion on job separation. So it appears that efforts to improve the workplace environment may have positive implications for employees’ satisfaction and organizational involvement, and for the longer stay on their job. Another important finding was that humor oriented workers were more likely to experience humor in the workplace and those who suffer less emotional exhaustion have less turnover intention. For future study, many questions need have to be addressed. First, respondents may differ in the types of humors they would prefer. Second, there was evidence to suggest that the contribution of humor ambiance could have positive implication for clients’ satisfaction. Third, our sample was biased in view of age level, job career, job level, and other demographic variables. Several unmeasured variables that may play a significant role in our model. We have to continue this sort of discussion in depth through all days coming.