EMOTION MANAGEMENT IN SERVICE INDUSTRIES

Emotions are an important and integral part in private and business life of every employee. While customers have the opportunity to express a wide range of emotions, employees are expected to express only those that are organizationally desirable. Therefore, employees in service industries have to control their emotions. The main purpose of this research has been to determine the most frequently shown and repressed primary emotions in service industry. The study is based on data collected through an empirical survey on the sample of 111 respondents. The research sample consists of service staff employed at three shopping malls in Rijeka. The primary emotions are defined by the Ekman's model of six emotions: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, fear and surprise. According to the results, service workers always show the emotion of joy, while they most frequently suppress the emotions of anger, sadness and disgust. The anger is suppressed because "otherwise workers can not do their job properly", sadness because "workers do not want others (customers, colleagues) to see and feel their mood" and disgust is suppressed because "it is not advisable to show emotions at work". The emotion control techniques depend on the type of emotion. Employees in service industries for the emotions of joy and sorrow most commonly use the technique "talk with someone about the fact that bothers me", while for the anger they most frequently use two techniques: "breathing" which is most commonly used and "take a short break to calm down" which is the second one most frequently used.