The Korea Local Administration Review

Emotional labor is the effort that you exert to separate yourself from a situationin order to get your work done. It refers to the process by which workers areexpected to manage their feelings in accordance with organizationally defined rulesand guidelines. The purpose of this study was to present a conceptualization of publicservants' emotional labor, and to examine the process and consequences of emotionallabor in public service. This study reviews theory and research on emotional laborwith a particular focus on its contributions to specific understandings of publicservants and public services agencies. The main findings of this study aresummarized as below. First, emotional labor of public servants really exist. Second,emotional labor has positive impact on their job-stress and emotional exhaustion.Third, emotional labor and its consequences have casual relationship in public service.In summary, the empirical result shows that the type of emotional labor dependson the type of consequences. Based on these results, valuable implications andstrategies would be generated in order to reduce the negative effects of emotionallabor in public sector.
□ Keywords: local community services, emotional labor, process, consequences,casual relationship