| Summary: | 碩士 === 美和科技大學 === 企業管理系經營管理碩士班 === 104 === Flight attendants constitute the majority of customer-service employees in the industry. Compared to their colleagues in other departments, flight attendants have more contact with passengers, and for longer periods of time. Within the airline industry, flight attendants are referred to as the first-line service attendants (Yuan, 2005). Passengers’ images of the airlines are heavily influenced by the manners and emotional attitudes of flight attendants. The working environment of flight attendants is noteworthy in that, over time, it will have a negative impact on flight attendants’ psychological health. During international service, flight attendants face numerous stresses. They must provide service over a long period of time; the pressure in the aircraft cabin is high and the space is hermetic; the types and temperaments of passengers are complex; and the environment may foster various diseases. Furthermore, the work hours of flight attendants are uncertain, and they often deal with night-shift assignments and time-zone changes. Such anomalous shifts over a long period of time constitute the main influence on the health of flight attendants. It is obvious that flight attendants are under a great deal of stress and due to many antecedents of stress.
Moreover, flight attendants have to control their overt behavior and private emotions in order to maintain positive interactions with colleagues and passengers. This kind of emotional control is dictated by the job performance rules of the company, and attendants are required to adjust their emotions to the requirements of the job. This is precisely how Hochschild (1983) defined “emotional labor.” Engaging in emotional labor over an extended period may cause emotional labor overload and make adjustment to work demands difficult. This situation, in turn, may lead to emotional dissonance, that is, a conflict between the attendant’s internal emotions and the organization’s rules regarding emotional expression. Over an extended period, this may have a negative effect on the employee’s physiology and psychology. Long-term emotional stress and relatively intense emotional labor result in emotional exhaustion.
One of the major affected outcomes of the above-mentioned problems to flight attendants is their performance at work. This study, therefore, examines the relationships between work performance and various affective factors may take impact directly on flight attendants working for a Vietnames flag-ship air carrier – Vietnam Airlines. The study tests the purpose model in relation of aspects as passenger satisfaction, work-family conflict, confidence in organizational leadership, especially work stress and empathy (closely related to emotional labor concept) and their impact respectively on work performance. The data collected from sample size of 333 flight attendants in two key hubs as Noi Bai Airport (in Hanoi, Vietnam) and Tan Son Nhat Airport (in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) were obtained through questionnaires and then analyzed by statistical test of correlation and regression, reliabilities for scales were also confirmed.
The results are significant with three significantly positive impact caused by passenger satisfaction and empathy shown at work to work performance, and shows that work stress significantly takes negative impact on VNA flight attendants’ performance. The results suggest that organization should facilitate supportive training for cabin crew, espcially in terms of customer service in order to improve and consolidate passenger satisfaction and the ability to express empathy in a healthy way, so that the employees might feel less stress and perform their work requirement of its best conditions. Moreover, learning to manage stress during flights and off flights is also a problem asked for even more solutions from both the organization and the individuals themselves within the extreme working atmosphere of the business and the whole industry.
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