THE INFLUENCES OF EMOTIONAL LABOR MECHANISMS ON THE PROJECT TEAM’S CREATIVITY AND PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Emotional Labor (EL) is accepted as a rather new concept in the literature of organizational behavior that has been studied from the 1980s onwards to the present day. However, when the related literature is examined, EL is generally considered to be neglected in research at both the individual level and the role of the project teams.The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between team contextual antecedents, emotional labor behaviors and team creativity and team performance in project teams in theTurkish information and communication Sector. Bystudying 85 Information and Communication Technologys (ICT)project, it was found that team contextual antecedents except top management support have a positive and significant effect on EL mechanisms.Furthermore, EL mechanisms except surface behaviour were found to generate a positive emotional influence on the team's creativity in reaching the expected performance of the team.