| Emotional expression management (EEM) has been widely studied in organizational research due to its impact on organizational behaviors and outcomes. Past research almost exclusively has focused on employees' interactions with external parties such as customers, clients, and patients. The purpose of the current study was to extend this literature by developing and testing a model of employees' management of emotional expressions in interactions with parties internal to the organization (i.e., leaders and peers). Data was collected from 40 work groups (129 focal participants, 40 leaders, and 40 peers) from a large real estate agency company located in Beijing, China. Results suggested that employees' EEM was partially determined by their own and their interaction partners' personality. Employees' agreeableness and conscientiousness and leaders' neuroticism appeared to be the major personality predictors of employees' EEM. Results also showed that employees' EEM influenced their emotional exhaustion, felt inauthenticity, and interaction avoidance behaviors as well as their interaction partners' communication satisfaction and perceived information sharing. In addition, the present findings revealed that the antecedents and consequences of employees' EEM differed for different types of interaction partners, namely leaders versus peers. The meaning and implications of these results for theory and practice are discussed. |
