Michelle Maru
Job burnout has been conceptualized in many different ways; however the most cited definition is “a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization of others, and a feeling of reduced personal accomplishment” (Lee and Ashforth, 1990, p.743). It is a condition that is on the rise among workers today. Burnout is a type of stress response most commonly displayed by individuals who have intense contact and involvement with others during the course of their normal workday. Traditionally, burnout was seen as occurring solely within the “helping” professions such as nursing and education; however, it is now seen as a widespread issue. Originally, burnout was studied from an emotional arousal perspective; however, empirical research began to emerge in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). This review will look at the 3 major components of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Additionally, the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the relationship between burnout and stress will be reviewed. Finally, the major causes and consequences of burnout will be presented.
This first component, or phase, of burnout is emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is considered to be the most important of the three components. It is “characterized by a lack of energy and a feeling that one’s emotional resources are used up. This . . . may coexist with feelings of frustration and tension . . .” (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993, p.623). Leiter and Maslach (1988) note that emotional exhaustion “refers to feelings of being emotionally overextended and drained by one’s contact with other people” (p. 297). This emotional exhaustion can manifest itself in physical characteristics such as waking up just as tired as when going to bed or lacking required energy to take on another task or face-to-face encounter (Maslach and Leiter, 1997).
Cordes and Dougherty (1993) present several key determinants of emotion exhaustion. The first, work overload, is defined as “the perception of too much work to accomplish in the time available” (p. 640). This organizational situation often forces employees to exert more energy and spend more time on work then they are capable of. Role conflict is a second source of emotion exhaustion. Frequently different individuals within an organization will impose conflicting expectations upon employees. Reconciling these differences can be both frustrating and emotionally taxing for employees. Personal expectations also contribute to emotional exhaustion. Typically young employees are overachievers with unrealistic expectations of both themselves and the organization they work for. “High expectations in terms of work challenge, rewards and recognition, and career advancement . . .can create intrinsic demand stress” (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993, p.642). These expectations, when not met, can lead to emotional exhaustion. Additionally, individuals who are highly involved with their job or who view it as central to their life are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion due to the increased importance that they place on their work. The final determinant of emotional exhaustion is interpersonal interactions. This is consistent with early beliefs that burnout only occurred in the helping professions. Frequent and intense, or emotionally charged, interactions are thought to be more taxing on the individual and thus more likely to lead to emotional exhaustion.
Depersonalization or dehumanization is the second component of burnout. This phase of burnout typically occurs after emotional exhaustion and tends to be a direct response to the stressors of the job. It refers to an individual’s personal detachment from work. For those who deal with people on a day-today basis this entails treating individuals as objects rather than people. Depersonalization is characterized by “a detached and an emotional callousness . . . ” (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993, p.623). Employees in the depersonalization phase of burnout will “take a cool, distant attitude toward work and the people on the job” (Maslach and Leiter, 1997, p.18). Depersonalization is viewed as a coping mechanism that is “not only an acceptable response, but a professional one as well” (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993, p.644).
The final component of burnout, diminished personal accomplishment, is “a decline in one’s feelings of competence and successful achievement . . .” (Leiter and Maslach, 1988, p. 298). Individuals in this phase of burnout view themselves negatively in both their ability to perform the job and their ability to have positive personal interactions (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). As Maslach and Leiter (1997) point out, individuals experiencing diminished personal accomplishment trivialize the things that they are successful at and no longer feel they are able to make a difference through their work or personal interactions. These feelings of inadequacy directly effect an individual’s self-efficacy. Although the diminished personal accomplishment component of burnout is not well understood, Cordes and Dougherty (1993) suggest that self-efficacy is at the very center of it. “We would expect variables that tend to make one feel lacking in control, helpless, inadequate or incompetent will contribute to feelings of diminished personal accomplishment” (p.646).
While there appears to be agreement in the literature that the above three components comprise the burnout process, there is some disagreement as to whether emotional exhaustion causes depersonalization that in turn creates diminished personal accomplishment or whether the three components interact in some other way. For example, Golembiewski and Munzenrider (as cited in Cordes and Dougherty, 1993) suggest that it is first depersonalization that leads to diminished personal accomplishment and then high levels of emotional exhaustion result.
While researchers tend to disagree about the interaction of the burnout components, they all consider burnout to be related to stress in some away. What isn’t clear, however, is where the distinctions between stress and burnout lie (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). McGrath and Schuler (as cited in Cordes and Dougherty, 1993) offer the following definition of stress: “a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint, or demand on being/having/doing what one desires and for which resolution is perceived to have uncertainty but which will lead to important outcomes” (p.625). Burnout is considered to differ from other forms of stess in that it entails a set of responses to large demands in the work environment that carry important interpersonal obligations and responsibilities (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993).
The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is the most widely used instrument to measure burnout. An initial 47-item inventory was administered to 605 employees across several service organizations. Ten factors emerged but six factors were eliminated based on various criteria. The resulting four factors, consisting of 25 items, was then administered to a similar sample of 450 individuals. The same four factors emerged again, three of them having eigenvalues greater than one. It is these three factors of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and diminished personal accomplishment which make up the sub-scales of the current MBI. The 22-item MBI asks individuals to indicate both the frequency and the intensity with which items occur. The frequency scale ranges from 1 which is “a few time a year” to 6 which means “every day” while the intensity scale ranges from 1 meaning “very mild, barely noticeable” to 7 meaning “very strong, major”. Respondents are able to note in additional space if the item is never experienced. The personal accomplishment scale is reversed scored, while emotional exhaustion and depersonalization are not. The results of the MBI reflect a continuum of burnout thus indicating degrees of burnout not presence or absence (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). A major criticism of the MBI was that there were no normative data or cut-scores provided (Burke, 1989). However, as Cordes and Dougherty (1993) note, the user’s manual of the current research edition does contain some normative data for demographic variables as well as for certain helping occupations. One reason that the MBI is so widely used may be that “the measure is both well developed and well understood (Burke, 1989, p.27). Burke (1989) goes on to state that the MBI can be changed in ways so that it can be applied to various samples.
The psychometric properties of the MBI have been tested and thus far it is considered to be a sound instrument. With regards to its reliability, “the MBI has evidenced relatively high internal consistency and test-retest reliability . . .” (Lee and Ashforth, 1990, p.743). Cordes and Dougherty (1993) discuss various studies in which both convergent and discriminate validities were examined. Significant positive correlations between an individual’s self-report ratings on the three scales and the ratings of someone who knew that individual well supply convergent evidence. Discriminant validity for the MBI is evidenced by its significant positive correlations with job satisfaction. Further, no significant correlations have been found between MBI scores and the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale, thus eliminating the possibility of socially desirable responses . However, Cordes and Dougherty (1993) caution that the Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix approach to validity assessment has not been published in the burnout literature to date.
Cordes and Dougherty (1993) have grouped the many causes of burnout into three general categories: job and role characteristics, organizational characteristics and personal characteristics. While all three types of characteristics contribute to burnout, the majority of the current research indicates that organizational characteristics are more strongly related to burnout than are personal characteristics (Leiter and Maslach, 1988).
Cordes and Dougherty’s (1993) category of job and role characteristics includes interpersonal relations, role conflict and role ambiguity as well as role overload. The nature of an individual’s interpersonal relations, specifically those interactions with clients, has been shown to play a large role in the development of burnout. “Client refers to any individual, internal or external, with whom one interacts on a professional basis” (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993, p. 628). Leiter and Maslach (1988) note that “contact with people can be a major source of distress, frustration or conflict . . .” (p.298). Burnout is more likely to occur with individuals whose client relationships are characterized by direct, frequent, extended contact and whose problems are chronic rather than acute (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993).
Role conflict occurs when an employee receives conflicting demands from individuals within the organization and role ambiguity occurs when individuals are not given enough information to effectively perform their work function. Organizations which foster high levels of role conflict are unpleasant for employees and more difficult thus leading to higher levels of burnout (Leiter and Maslach, 1988). Various research studies have shown that role conflict and role ambiguity can account for significant amounts of variance in the emotional exhaustion phase of the burnout process (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993).
Role overload, the third factor that contributes to job and role characteristics, occurs when the organization gives the employee too many tasks to complete in not enough time. Organizations unintentionally create this overload because of the need for increased productivity; however, it is taxing on both the individual’s time and energy supply (Maslach and Leiter, 1997). Organizational characteristics that contribute to burnout include contingency and non-contingency of outcomes as well as the context of the job. The linking of rewards and punishment to job performance, contingency of outcomes, has not received much attention in the literature. It does however have both intuitive appeal and theoretical justification (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). As an example, employees seek both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards from their jobs. Intrinsically, individuals hope to find work that is enjoyable; however, when conflict, ambiguity and overload characterize it, the intrinsic value is lost. Further, jobs with low pay relative to the amount of time and energy spent create a loss of extrinsic rewards (Maslach and Leiter, 1997).
Job context, the second organizational characteristic, has been found to affect the levels of both stress and burnout in the workplace (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). As noted earlier, client interactions play a large role in burnout. Jobs that are characterized by these intense, frequent relationships are more likely to produce burnout than are those positions that demand less of their client relationships. Thus, the context within which one performs work contributes greatly to the degree of burnout one may experience.
Numerous personal characteristics such as demographics, social support, expectations, and career progress have been shown to affect burnout rates. Much of the literature reports gender differences; however, no definite conclusions regarding the exact nature of the relationship have been made. Additional research indicates that younger employees experience burnout more than their older counterparts and that married employees and those with children report relatively less job burnout (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993).
The affect of social supports on burnout has received a lot of attention in the literature. Social support is commonly viewed as a moderator between job stress and reactions to that stress (Leiter and Maslach, 1988). Cordes and Dougherty (1993) suggest that either social supports help individuals to redefine the stresses of the work environment or that they help individuals realize their ability to effectively deal with the stresses given the aide of social supports. Thus, “…the social support system becomes a coping resource” (Koeske, Kirk and Koeske, 1993, p. 320).
As mentioned in the earlier discussion of emotional exhaustion, personal expectations can impact an individual’s propensity toward burnout. When a discrepancy exists between an individual’s perception of an organization and the realities of that organization, these unmet expectations become a source of burnout for the individual. In addition, individuals may experience a mismatch between what they thought they were capable of accomplishing in a particular position and what they can actually accomplish, thus facilitating the burnout process (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993).
The final personal characteristic of burnout purposed by Cordes and Dougherty (1993) is career progress. They hypothesize that “individuals who have had greater upward career movement may experience less burnout” (p.637). One reason for this is that upward movement is usually characterized by less frequent and intense client contact. In addition, it is hypothesized that career advancement will foster an increase in perceived personal accomplishment thus counterbalancing this stage of burnout. Although intuitively and theoretically appealing, the affect of career progress on burnout has not been thoroughly researched.
The consequences of job burnout on both the organization and the employee can be great. While many of the effects that will be discussed are not unique to burnout, they will serve to highlight the importance of reducing burnout (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). Maslach and Leiter (1997) suggest that “burnout can cause such physical problems as headache, gastrointestinal illness, high blood pressure, muscle tension, and chronic fatigue” (p.19). Cordes and Dougherty (1993) go on to cite such psychological symptoms as lowered self-esteem, depression, irritability, helplessness and anxiety.
From an organizational standpoint, burnout can lead to such things as increases in turnover, absenteeism, greater intentions to quit and reductions in productivity (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). The end result for organizations is that greater levels of burnout mean lower levels of quality and quantity produced (Maslach and Leiter, 1997).
The components, causes and consequences of job burnout are complex in nature. Many of the important elements have been presented in this paper while others are still being researched. Unfortunately, job burnout has far-reaching effects for both the employee and the organization; therefore, employees and managers should be aware of the conditions under which burnout is most likely to occur and work together to try to prevent it.
REFERENCES
Burke, R. J. (1989) Toward a Phase Model of Burnout: Some Conceptual and Methodological Concerns. Group and Organization Studies, 14(1), 23-32.
Cordes, C. L., & Dougherty, T. W. (1993). A Review and an Integration of Research on Job Burnout. Academy of Management Review, 18(4), 621-656.
Koeske, G. F., Kirk, S. A., & Koeske, R. D. (1993) Coping with Job Stress: Which Strategies Work Best? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 66(4), 319-335.
Lee, R. T., & Ashforth, B. E. (1990). On the Meaning of Maslach’s Three Dimensions of Burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(6), 743-747.
Leiter, M. P., & Maslach, C. (1988). The Impact of Interpersonal Environment on Burnout and Organizational Commitment. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 9(4), 297-308.
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). The Truth About Burnout: How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to do About It. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
