Going beyond deep and surface acting: a bottom-up taxonomy of strategies used in response to emotional display rules

ABSTRACT Research on emotional labour has primarily focused on two emotional labour strategies that employees may use when confronted with organizational display rules: deep acting and surface acting. Initial evidence suggests that these two strategies do not fully cover the range of strategies that employees engage in when responding to display rules in interactions with customers. Yet, a systematic overview of the full range of such strategies is missing. Across two studies, we used a bottom-up approach to develop a taxonomy of strategies used in response to display rules. In Study 1, we conducted interviews in the Netherlands and in Turkey to collect a comprehensive list of employee-generated strategy statements. We found that deep and surface acting only partially accounted for the strategy statements (Netherlands: 47.6%; Turkey: 53.3%). In Study 2, we asked a new sample of participants to sort the strategy statements into categories based on their similarity. Hierarchical cluster analysis showed that employees engage in deep and surface acting in response to display rule requirements. However, employees also engage in additional strategies: changing customers’ cognitions or affect, solution-oriented, waiting, and avoidance strategies. These results reveal that employees rely on a wide range of strategies to deal with display rules.