Impact of emotional labour on taking charge to predict employee’s creative and task performance: The moderation of performance-based pay from the lens of self-determination theory

The importance of emotional labouring and performance of frontline service employees, who in their boundary-spanning positions significantly affect service-rendering organisations’ efficiency by their direct communications with customers, continues to increase. However, it is still important to ascertain an efficient understanding of the comprehensive process including behavioural mechanism and a common perception of the rewards’ impacts on motivation and creativity. Therefore, guided by self-determination theory, this study examined the mechanism and boundary conditions between emotional labour and job performance (creative and task)–specifically, taking charge has been considered as a mediator and performance-based pay as a moderator in between relationships. The authors selected a time-lagged cross-sectional design to investigate interrelations amongst study variables at two different time points and surveyed 417 team members and 186 team leaders in Pakistan’s commercial banks. Findings were consistent with the assumed conceptual framework. For instance, deep-acting affected taking charge positively, surface-acting demonstrated a positive link with task performance and taking charge partially mediated the relationships between deep-acting and performances under boundary conditions of low performance-based pay. By summing up, the study adds to the literature and recommends managerial implications with a more affluent view of nomothetic linkage among frontline employees’ emotional labor, HR practices, and the service sector.