Fluctuating emotions: relating emotional variability and job satisfaction

Abstract

This study focuses on the relation between emotional variability and job satisfaction and examines emotional exhaustion as a potential explanation for why variability may result in lower satisfaction. In addition, this study examines organizational identification as a potential moderator of the relation between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. A total of 244 nonacademic staff in two universities in Ecuador responded to the surveys. The results demonstrated that emotional exhaustion mediated the relation between emotional variability and job satisfaction and that organizational identification weakened the negative relation between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. This research is among the first to investigate emotional variability in organizations and examine the role of organizational identification in buffering the negative effect of emotional variability.