By definition, a not-for-profit（NFP） organization is an entity organized for a purpose other than profit; that is, it operates for the public goods but not for generating individual wealth. As the organizations in the third sector in reference to the public/private sectors, NFPs are an indispensable part of the structure of today’s economy, and they have significantly helped to fill a void where government or private services have been less effective. With an increasing role of NFPs in the society, socially and economically, and in our more service-oriented economy, the new century has witnessed a positive increasing ratio of labor force in NFPs. Of all the resources that contribute to the successful performance of NFPs, the human resource is the most fundamental one, because NFPs, as the purpose-driven mission organizations, rely on their employees to deliver the services that nonprofit stakeholders expect. Accordingly, the issues related to Human Resources and Management (HRM) in NFPs have gained much attention in terms of both practice and theory.
Emotional labor (EL) refers to the affective dimension of service work and is often used as a descriptive concept in research of public service workers. The deregulation and the increased competition in the service industry have directly led to a focus on the quality of emotional interaction between service providers and consumers. Being parallelling to physical and cognitive labors, the concept of EL has become a new issue in organizational HRM. However, the academic outcomes related to EL have until now almost exclusively been confined to the private and government fields. NFPs, as one important provider of social and public services, need to perform EL in addition to physical and cognitive labors and to manage EL in accordance with the organizational rules in order to deliver services within a context of heavy emotional labor demands.
Why EL Management is embedded in NFPs and its HRM? Numerous studies have shown that individuals are differently motivated into NFPs, thus requiring a distinct framework to understand why NFPs shall require and manage EL. In contrast to the public/private sectors, it is the organizational service mission and the non-government and grassroots-oriented characteristics at the organizational level, as well as the volunteering spirit, that drive the staff in NFPs to perform more challenging EL, thus requiring the management of EL in NFPs’ HRM.
(1) Analysis of EL management in NFPs at the organizational level. First, the mission of public welfare service and EL management. On the one hand, NFPs have been known as mission-driven entities with the social duty of offering public welfare services. Numerous research findings have suggested that EL mainly exists in the front-line service provision processes, and the public welfare service that NFPs offer is a kind of service that is to facilitate the social benefits and is intended for the public. Therefore, it can be concluded that EL is embedded in the service offered by NFPs. On the other hand, clients normally directly evaluate the quality of services in accordance with the skills of employees to perform emotional labor. Given that the revenue of the service NFPs offer has increasingly become one of the core financial sources upon which the organization depends in future, NFPs need to manage EL in order to have an effective interaction with clients. Second, the non-government and grassroots-oriented characteristics and EL management. NFP is deemed as an important entity to safeguard the rights of citizens and an effective exchange channel between the government and the public, which makes nonprofit employees be confronted with more versatile expectations by different stakeholders and with a need to perform more complex EL. Additionally, NFPs have played an important role in charitable and philanthropic areas, such as disaster relief, poverty reduction, and the like, and thereby serve more marginalized and vulnerable populations, such as the poor, the disabled, and those on the worst day of their lives, who have high psychological sensitivity that will lead to more intense and challenging EL and its management to NFPs.
(2)Analysis of EL management in NFPs at the individual level. First, the volunteering spirit of employees and EL management. Those who choose to work in NFPs are characterized by the volunteering spirit and thus have a strong desire to make a difference to the society, a goal to realize the public interest, and a reliance on intrinsic rewards rather than the salary or job security. However, the low compensation associated with NFPs has the crowding-out effect on altruism or pro-social behavior, and the individuals may encounter some emotional problems such as depersonalization and emotional dissonance, for they need to express the volunteering spirit and behavior to the public even though the portrayed expression is not the same as the inner emotion they feel. Therefore, NFPs need to manage EL so as to safeguard and maintain the volunteering spirit of the employees. Second, the imbalance of the HR structure. On the one hand, NFPs boast female-oriented positions, since human services are more consonant with women’s socialization. Compared with the male staff, female workers might be expected to perform more EL, and experience more emotional dissonance arising from the work-family imbalance(WFI). On the other hand, due to the more readily acceptance of job applicants for a consideration of a low labor cost and a comparative disadvantage at HR competition against the public/private sector, NFPs are more popular with the marginalized individuals stemming from demographic and competency disadvantages such as age, gender, education, etc. That is, the ?so-called marginalized in the job market tend to have low emotional intelligence and lack emotive skills, thus inducing high demands of EL and its management in HRM.
What is the connotation of NFP’s HRM from the perspective of EL management? First, hierarchical management of EL: the core concept. The success of NFPs rests on whether the needs of consumers could be satisfied. The marketing activities shall prioritize the needs of the internal clients rather than those of the external ones, and therefore NFPs need to improve job satisfaction of the employees, which will lead to the improving of the service quality and then the satisfaction degree of clients externally. Since the tactics of EL are normally divided into surface acting and deep acting, the HRM approach of NFPs can be framed as Hierarchical Management of EL that is composed of subjective management at the deep level and objective management at the surface level. The former is to psychologically manage the EL of employees, while the latter is to physically regulate emotional expressions and behaviors, so as to improve the satisfaction of external stakeholders. Second, to establish the non-material contract between employers and employees: the value orientation. Traditionally, numerous studies suggest that EL is performed for an exchange of wage. In contrast, NFPs are the value-led entities, and the individuals in NFPs differ from those in the other two sectors. Those who choose to work in NFPs may do so because they have a moral attachment and are committed to its cause of improving pro-social goods. Therefore, as opposed to the for-profit sector, EL that individuals perform in NFPs is for exchanging an opportunity of making a difference to the society and public interest altruistically rather than strictly for compensation. It is a non-material contract, other than the material contract, that well describes the ties between employers and employees and the work motivations in NFPs. Moreover, on the one hand, the establishment of the non-material contract reflects the employees’ identification with the mission of NFPs, under which employees tend to perform EL at the deep acting and therefore could have more personal accomplishments and avoid emotion dissonance. On the other hand, from the perspective of resource balance, those in NFPs could be psychologically compensated for the loss of emotion resource due to the performing of EL, if they could strongly establish the non-material contract with NFPs.
How to reform the HR functions of NFP from the perspective of EL management. First, HR screening. NFPs shall screen and recruit those who have high emotional intelligence for jobs with heavy EL demands, because emotional intelligence normally is a good predictor of employee performance. Besides, from the perspective of EL management, with a purpose to avoid the emotion dissonance and in a pursuit of the deep acting of EL by employees, NFPs shall try to recruit those who are more ?value-embedded and intrinsically oriented, and could identify with organizational mission. Second, HR development. NFPs shall improve the emotive skills of employees so as to optimize the emotion style and have an effective interaction with citizens. The emotive skills to be developed normally include emotion display skills, emotion perceptive ability, conflict management skills, and the like. What’s more, NFPs shall help employees to implement cognition reforming, as cognitive abilities and EL abilities are related and combined for the successful performance of employees. Third, HR value acknowledgement. Traditionally, the value of positions in NFPs is downgraded with low compensation levels, because jobs in NFPs are mainly service-oriented and employers tend to acknowledge the skill-oriented job more than the service-oriented one. Since EL can be sold and bought as a product, the commercialization of EL, therefore, requires that the value of EL be the component of the HR value, and be acknowledged in related HR activities such as compensation package arrangements and performance appraisals. Fourth, HR guarantee system. The guarantee system of NFPs is composed of three parts:(1)Resource balance system of EL, including more competitive compensation package, more decision-making involvement opportunities, and more autonomy in the job to balance the loss of psychological and emotional resource; (2) Employee Assistance Programs(EAPs) of EL to offer timely and effective service to those who experience problems emotionally and psychologically, such as burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder; and (3) Team Emotion System of EL to encourage and influence the employees in EL performing by the effect of emotion sharing and contagion.
In conclusion, the paper takes a step towards combining EL and NFP, and therefore enlarges the connotation of EL and offers a new perspective to HRM of NFPs. As such, theoretically, the paper is a normative analysis, so the scholarly arguments presented here require testing by empirical analysis, and a comparative research is needed to understand EL and HRM of NFPs in different cultural backgrounds and countries.
(按： 英文版由作者本人在原文基础上进行了缩写，内容已有删节)