Characteristics That Contribute To Work Stress And Burnout
By Kelly McCullough
The conditions for and burnout most frequently studied and cited in the literature can be grouped under three general headings: task characteristics (workload, role conflict and ambiguity, autonomy, and tenure), organizational characteristics (job context, and organizational pace and technology) and personal characteristics (demographics, social support, hardiness, unrealistic expectations, and career progress). In this article we will explore Task Characteristics.

Task Characteristics

Workload: Experiencing excessive work demands can lead to stress. Overload, quantitatively occurs when there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them in; qualitatively it is defined as an individual’s perception of their lack of ability to complete a task or reach expected performance standards. Underload, qualitatively, occurs when an individual is subject to too little challenge and job stimulation, has also been proposed to play a role in the experience of work stress.

As the demands (qualitative and quantitative) increase, the demands placed on the individual also increase. It is crucial to recognize that if these demands are experienced on a continuous basis, rather than intermittently, the individual may be more vulnerable to burnout.

Role conflict and Ambiguity: Role Conflict, as defined by Kahn, occurs “as a result of incongruity or incompatibility of expectations communicated to a role incumbent by his or her role sender” (Kahn, 1978). In other words, an individual experiences role conflict when the set of expectations an individual uses to operate within a job is in conflict with another set of. Role Ambiguity is associated with an individual’s need for certainty and predictability.

Ambiguity can occur when an individual does not posses sufficient information to complete a task. Insufficient information occurs when it is restricted or the communication is unclear. The literature demonstrates that these variables - role conflict and ambiguity - can account for a significant proportion of the variance in the dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment.

Autonomy: Autonomy can be defined as the amount of decision making and control one has over his or her job. Several researchers have suggested autonomy, and moreover a lack of autonomy, has a direct effect on job and a moderating role in burnout.

Tenure: Tenure can be a moderator of the relationship between job and burnout. Although limited, some evidence suggests that experienced employees may not suffer from burnout as readily as their less tenured counterparts. In addition, individuals with lower job tenure experience the classic three component-model of burnout, whereas employees with greater tenure had more varied experience to burnout pressures. It seems that more experienced or tenured individuals are more likely to have developed coping skills over time as compared to their junior counterparts.

However, there is room for caution in the interpretation of such results due to the self-selection bias that may lie with more tenured individuals. It is possible

that the resistance to burnout exhibited by more tenured individuals is not in fact because of tenure but rather a measure of personal resistance – hardiness – to burnout. This is to say that more ‘hardy’ individuals will be less apt to fall victim to either condition and its negative effects, thus creating a greater chance of obtaining tenure.

Organizational Characteristics that Contribute to Work and Burnout
The conditions for and burnout most frequently studied and cited in the literature can be grouped under three general headings: task characteristics (workload, role conflict and ambiguity, autonomy, and tenure), organizational characteristics (job context, and organizational pace and technology) and personal characteristics (demographics, social support, hardiness, unrealistic expectations, and career progress). In this article we will explore Organizational Characteristics.

Organizational Characteristics
The environment one works in can have a powerful influence on an individual. Several researchers have examined the effect of organizational level antecedents on work and burnout.

Job Context: Job context can be a contributor to the incidence of and burnout in the workplace.

In a study of the effects of organizational politics and support on stress, Cropanzano, Howes, Grandy & Toth (1997) explored psychological environment as a moderator of burnout. Organizational politics was viewed as dysfunctional, defined as “limited to behavior that is strategically designed to maximize short-term or long-term self-interest.” For example, an example of political behavior could be a “politically-oriented manager who might use the performance evaluation system for self-promotion or show favoritism to a personal friend.” On the other hand, organizational support was defined as a caring and secure workplace, a positive environment that is related to a variety of positive work outcomes.

Research has shown that there are three trends concerning organizational politics and support: first, politics was related to negative work outcomes, while support is related to positive. Second, politics and support predicted above and beyond one another, suggesting that they should be viewed as separate constructs rather than opposite ends of a single continuum. Third, politics and support predicted job tension, somatic tension, general fatigue, and burnout.

Job level, the second component of job context can e linked to emotional exhaustion. Pretty and colleagues (1992) looked at the relationship of job level and emotional exhaustion among managerial and non-managerial telecommunications employees. Results demonstrated that women experienced more emotional exhaustion and depersonalization if they were non-managers, while the opposite reaction was noted for men. Gaines and Jermier (1983) also conducted a study of job level with police officers, noting that emotional exhaustion differed across departments suggesting different reactions to among different jobs in the force. Each of these studies lends credibility to the moderating effect of job level and the experience of emotional exhaustion.

Organizational Pace and Technology: The pace of change experienced by organizations today has been unprecedented in history. Although little research has been conducted, time will reveal what effects the increased pace of organizations and technology has on and burnout experienced by today’s workers.

Task Characteristics that Contribute to Work and Burnout
The conditions for and burnout most frequently studied and cited in the literature can be grouped under three general headings: task characteristics (workload, role conflict and ambiguity, autonomy, and tenure), organizational characteristics (job context, and organizational pace and technology) and personal characteristics (demographics, social support, hardiness, unrealistic expectations, and career progress). In this article we will explore Personal Characteristics.

Personal Characteristics
In addition to task and organizational influences, research has demonstrated strong relationships between personal characteristics and the experience of and burnout.

Demographics: Empirical evidence is mixed concerning the relationship between gender and burnout. Numerous studies have reported differences on all three constructs of the model; however, there is little evidence of a clear understanding of the pattern or complexity of those relationships.

Younger individuals have consistently been found to report higher levels of burnout and this may serve as an indication of the previously discussed effect of tenure on employees.

Social Support: Social support as a moderator of burnout has received extensive attention in the literature. Social support appears to affect workers in two different ways: as a buffer between work and physical consequences and a direct effect on experienced. As a buffer, social support functions in two ways: first, to redefine the threat or stressor, and second, to promote the use of adaptive coping behaviors.

Outside the realm of stress, empirical research has found positive correlations for social support and physical health.

Hardiness: It has been suggested that individuals who possess hardiness have a buffer to the negative impact of life changes, or stress. Individuals who posses hardiness exhibit an internal locus of control, an extremely commitment to activities in their lives, and they view changes in life as challenges

Unrealistic Expectations: Burnout is often associated with the gap between an individual’s perceptions of expectations for successful professional performance and the realistic observed performance. Researchers have suggested that the greater the discrepancy an individual experiences, the greater the effect felt by the organization and the employee’s reaction to their job.

Shifts in employee expectations have also been studied, revealing a correlation with all three constructs of the burnout scale (e.g. high burnout was correlated with negative expectations shifts). This relationship was related to employee tenure as less experienced employees tended to shift their expectations more negatively causing higher levels of burnout, whereas experienced employees reported decreased levels of burnout by positively shifting their expectations.

Career Progress: Employees who experience greater upward career movement will be less likely to suffer from burnout. This hypothesis is grounded in three thoughts, one for each component of burnout: first, promotion accompanies a reduction in client contact; second, promotion may provide rare feedback concerning personal accomplishment; and third, the experience of career progress is likely to be coupled with an individual’s belief in organizational policies, procedures and environment. However, it must be noted that these hypotheses have yet to be validated empirically.

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About Author:
Kelly McCullough is a graduate with a Masters in Organizational Health from the University of Michigan. She has worked for Entec Corporation as research assistance. One of her most significant projects was her work as a research analyst on a major study of older workers that was led by Entec Corporation for the Canadian Federal Government.