Beyond Deep Acting: How Transformational Leadership Is Associated with Employee Well-Being Through Surface Acting and Self-Efficacy

This study examines the associations among transformational leadership, emotional labor strategies, self-efficacy, and job-related well-being among 355 employees of a Turkish insurance company. Drawing on Social Cognitive Theory and Conservation of Resources Theory, data were collected using convenience sampling and analyzed with SPSS 22 and SmartPLS 4. The findings indicate that transformational leadership is not significantly associated with deep acting but is negatively associated with surface acting. Both deep acting and surface acting are significantly associated with self-efficacy, which is strongly positively associated with job-related well-being. The results also reveal a significant serial indirect association linking transformational leadership, surface acting, self-efficacy, and job-related well-being, whereas the corresponding pathway involving deep acting is not significant. Self-efficacy further appears to mediate the associations between emotional labor strategies and job-related well-being. Participants’ specific job functions and levels of customer contact were not recorded; therefore, the findings should not be interpreted as specific to customer-facing roles. Overall, these findings challenge the assumption that transformational leadership is uniformly associated with positive emotional labor strategies and offer a more nuanced understanding of the associations among leadership, emotional labor, and employee well-being.