Abstract:

Teachers are increasingly faced with stress and burnout. Their emotions depend on the working conditions where they practice their teaching professions. In fact, unfairness in the workplace is one major condition which is a stimulus to burnout among employees. Furthermore, the commitment to the job is influenced by the work conditions such as unfairness. In the business world, having less emotional exhaustion on the one hand and more job commitment amid employees on the other hand is amongst the permanent objectives of companies. Emotional labor refers to the exhibition of socially accepted emotions. It is commonly oriented toward customer satisfaction. Emotional Labor may have consequences on the well-being and commitment at work. Teaching is an exemplar of a crucial job that depends much on the work conditions to carry the appropriate outputs expected from the teacher. With the increasing numbers of professional diseases such as depression and apathy as well as the growing claims with pay and promotion advantages, the education sector seems to be vulnerable to emotional labor, emotional exhaustion and faithlessness when it is affected of injustice. Definitely, teachers and professors are valuable for the education of future generations and the prosperity of the countries that is why this research is interested to study first of all, if teachers feel any unfair conditions at work with regard to their salaries, their promotion perspectives, and the felt respect and esteem in the workplace. Then, it focuses on their well-being and commitment depending on the effects of the feelings of injustice. Shortly, the first objective of this research is to study the perception of injustice in the education sector and its impact on teachers and professors. Second, it will investigate the emotional labor and its different effects on teachers in the educational context to better understand their emotional outputs. Third, it is to find a remedy to replenish the teachers’ resources and increase their commitment at work. Relying on the effort-reward imbalance (ERI) model and the conservation of resources theory, we conduct a research among teachers and professors from all the levels of education, who are working in stressful high-cost/low-gain conditions. The goal is to verify whether giving high levels of autonomy at work can mitigate the adverse consequences of unfairness. Reports from 142 teachers working in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and universities find that Effort Reward Imbalance foretells more burnout and less commitment. Emotional labor predicted burnout but not commitment. Analyzing the moderating effects of autonomy at work, we found that autonomy betters the link of effort-reward imbalance at work on commitment. This research puts the finger on autonomy as a management solution to the negative effect of unfairness among teachers and professors with regard to the commitment attitude. Giving high autonomy in the teaching sector has positively influenced the teachers' commitment in the presence of strong perception of injustice.

Keywords:

Unfairness, Emotional Labor, Autonomy, Burnout , Commitment