Hotel Restaurant Service Employees' Sources of Positive and Negative Emotions

Focusing on hotel restaurant service employees, this study aims to explore sources of positive and negative emotions. Through a qualitative approach, both field observation and interviews are applied. Two of the authors firstly conduct field observation through an internship at hotel restaurants. Then, semi-structured interviews are completed with questions collected from the literature review. After a three-step inductive content analysis, this study proposes five first-order sources in positive emotion that includes customer interactions, manager leadership, coworker support, personal confidence and achievement, and restoration and leisure. Nine first-order sources in negative emotion are extracted that include workplace miscommunication, destructive managerial leadership, kitchen trouble, poor task management, inadequate remuneration, career development problems, conflicts with personal relationships, customer service problems, and problems in leisure and health. The findings of this study reveal that the complexity and the structure for sources of positive and negative emotions are largely different.