Investigating Organisational Justice as a Catalyst for Emotional Labour of Healthcare Service Providers

Emotional labour is a positive action for maintaining and shaping patients' emotions while at the hospital. This action is usually demonstrated by healthcare service providers to patients for the purpose of giving the patients hope, regardless of the health challenge they are facing. Thus, health service providers may not be able to demonstrate this positive action in an unjust workplace. This paper critically investigates the relationship between organisational justice and emotional labour of healthcare service providers in southeast Nigeria. Previous studies have not really explored the relationship between organisational justice and emotional labour of healthcare service providers, especially those working at the state-owned hospitals in Enugu State, Nigeria. It was this lacuna that motivated the researchers to embark on this study. Equity theory and social exchange theory serve as the underpinning theories. A cross–sectional research design was used to guide the way researchers collected data, and the research instrument that was used to collect data is a questionnaire. Validated instruments of organisational justice and emotional labour were used. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the formulated hypotheses with ADANCO 2.3.1, while frequency distribution was used to analyse the respondents’ profiles. The result showed a strong correlation between organisational justice and emotional labour, which enhances the well-being, job satisfaction and job performance of healthcare services providers. The findings of this study corroborated with the results of previous investigations. It was concluded that organisational justice is a catalyst for emotional labour management of healthcare service providers.