The Role of Organizational Culture in Moderating Effect of Emotional Labor Strategies on Nursing Professionalism

Abstract

Background: Emotional labor strategies are necessary for nurses to provide nursing care for society through friendliness, caring, and positive emotion. The results of a meta-analysis of emotional labor research have proven that previous studies focused more on the impact of deep and surface acting strategies only at the individual level of the nurses. This study emphasizes the impact of emotional labor strategies at the individual and organizational levels. Purpose: The study aimed to measure the effect of emotional labor strategy (surface and deep acting strategy) toward nursing professionalism mediated by organizational culture. Methods: This research design is a quantitative survey. The respondents were 124 hospital nurses recruited by accidental sampling technique. The instrument in this study used emotional labor, organizational culture, and nursing professionalism scale. The mediation model technique by Hayes’s PROCESS was used to analyse the data. Results: The result showed an indirect effect of the role of organizational culture in mediating deep acting strategy toward nursing professionalism (b=0.03, 95% CI [-0.00–0.94]). Nurses who displayed deep acting strategies to their patients indirectly affected professionalism through the mediation of organizational culture. However, the surface acting strategies did not show a significant effect on nursing professionalism (b=-0.02, 95% CI [-0.05–0.00]) . Conclusion: Deep acting strategies indirectly affect nursing professionalism through organizational culture as a mediation variable compared to surface acting strategies. This study supports the control theory that emotional strategies implemented by nurses as organizational culture are a comparator to engage in nurse professionalism to provide healthcare. The deep acting strategies through organizational culture are essentially recommended for nurses in the hospital to improve their professionalism.

Keywords

• deep acting
• nursing professionalism
• organizational culture
• surface acting