The Dark Side of Work Engagement: Emotional Labor and Employee Jealousy

The present study aimed at investigating the relationships among work engagement, emotional labor, and employee jealousy. For this purpose, research was conducted on employees with a sample consisting of 270 participants and structural equation modeling was performed to investigate the relationships. The sub-dimensions of emotional labor were considered to examine its effects on work engagement. The analysis revealed that faking emotions is negatively associated with work engagement. The deep acting is positively associated with work engagement, and the hiding emotions is not significantly associated with work engagement. It was found that employee jealousy is positively associated with hiding and faking emotions. Employee jealousy has not directly but it has indirectly associated with work engagement. In addition, faking emotions were played a mediator role in the relationship between work engagement and employee jealousy. Overall, these findings can be taken into consideration regarding improve the work engagement of the employees.