Fake it till you make it: Emotional labor, burnout, and the mediating role of perceived organizational support among school teachers in coastal Karnataka.

Introduction: Burnout, which occurs as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal pressures on the job, is becoming more common in human service professions such as teaching. All of these human service jobs have one thing in common: continuous interpersonal contact. This direct contact with people leads to the performance of emotional labor, which is defined as the regulation of feelings in the workplace in order to conform to organizational regulations, which contributes to employee burnout. Perceived organizational support, according to Job Demands and Resources Theory, can be a protective factor for employees by acting as a job resource that buffers the negative effects of numerous job demands, such as emotional labor, and minimizes burnout. Objective: To study emotional labor, burnout, and the mediating role of perceived organizational support among teachers. Method: The descriptive, correlational, cross-sectional study was conducted among 101 school teachers, from Mangaluru between the age groups of 25-45 years, including both men and women. The study was done using a questionnaire approach and the scales used were the Emotional Labor Scale, Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, and Survey of Perceived Organizational Support. Results: The result of the study suggests that there is a significant negative relationship between deep acting and burnout among teachers (r = 0.202; p-value = 0.043) and between surface acting and burnout (r = -0.211; p-value = 0.034). Perceived organizational support is partially mediated between surface acting and burnout as well as deep acting and burnout among teachers. No significant differences in the usage of surface acting or deep acting emerged with respect to work experience and gender. Conclusion: This study sought to bring awareness to emotional labor as an integral part of teaching and how it can contribute to burnout. It aids in understanding the antecedents of burnout and how school management can mobilize organizational resources to improve employees’ perceptions of organizational support, which will help in dampening the negative impact of burnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]