Emotional Labor: An Examination of Faculty in Two Countries

Abstract

Although there have been several studies on expatriate adjustment, acculturation and cultural adaptation to a foreign culture in service-driven occupations, there is a dearth of research in many areas. There have been few studies that have looked at jobs that have high emotional labor in the academic field in a cross-cultural context. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining a high emotional labor occupation -the teaching profession, by looking at two different samples of teaching faculty, in two different countries. Two different groups of faculty from the US one teaching in the US, and one teaching as expatriate faculty in China were compared. Findings revealed significant differences in perceptions of emotional labor, stressors and strains. The implications of these findings are discussed.