Emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion among hotel employees in Nigeria

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a model, which investigated emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion among employees in frontline service jobs. Data were gathered via self-administered questionnaires from a sample of frontline hotel employees in Nigeria, which is one of the neglected developing sub-Saharan countries in the African continent. The results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated a number of significant direct and partial mediating effects and provided support for the majority of the hypothesized relationships. Specifically, emotional dissonance partially mediated the relationships of negative affectivity and intrinsic motivation with emotional exhaustion. The results also revealed that emotional exhaustion partially mediated the effect of emotional dissonance on turnover intentions. Unexpectedly, emotional dissonance was found to be positively related to job performance. Implications for frontline employees and their managers and directions for future research are discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.