Smile! Your Employees Are Watching: How Embodied Cognitions Can Influence Employees' "Service with a Smile"

The service sector has become an increasingly large area of the workforce since the switch away from manufacturing jobs (Taylor, 1916). Indeed, many researchers have begun focusing on how organizations need to ensure that employees engage in "service with a smile" (Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 1983) to create a positive experience for the customer to improve bottom-line organizational gains (e.g., return customers, word-of-mouth recommendations, etc.). While researchers have suggested that managers might be responsible for crafting employee emotional displays (e.g., Barsade, 2002; Hochschild, 1983; Pescosolido, 2002), little work has actually explored how managers help shape appropriate employee emotional displays beyond rules and mandates. In the current article, the author reviews embodied cognitions and explains how these cognitions have important potential implications for managers. Other applications for embodied cognitions in the workplace are also discussed.