Psychological Reports, 2012, 110, 3, 801-819.

Psychological Reports 2012

DOI 10.2466/01.09.13.PR0.110.3.801-819 ISSN 0033-2941
NEW PERSPECTIVE ON JOB BURNOUT: EXPLORING THE ROOT
CAUSE BEYOND GENERAL ANTECEDENTS ANALYSIS
1, 2
HONG CHEN, PENG WU, AND WEI WEI
China University of Mining and Technology
Summary.Previous studies of job burnout are discussed and three types of job
burnout are presented and compared. Various studies of job burnout were reviewed
in terms of participants, burnout situation, and root cause. Next, the framework of
job burnout antecedents was reformulated, including characteristics of organizations,
work, and individuals. Three types of job burnoutorganizational weakness-
caused burnout, work weakness-caused burnout, and individual characteristic-
caused burnoutwere posited based on the root causes contributing to job burnout.
Finally, the three subcomponents of job burnout were compared on availability,
concealment, universality, severity, duration, difusibility, and changeability. Root
causes of job burnout should be attended to in job burnout research and intervention
programs.
Job burnout has been a serious problem in the workforces in modern
societies. Leiter and Maslach (2001) pointed out that both white and blue-
collar workers face psychological problems, including feeling stressed
out, insecure, undervalued, and alienated in their workplaces. Lindb-
lom, Linton, Fedeli, and Bryngelsson (2006) conducted a study of 3,000
participants ages 20 to 60 in Sweden and found that 81% of the partici-
pants experienced burnout. In 2008, ChinaHRD.net published a report on
Chinese employees job burnout rate, in which 10.8% of the participants
scored high on all three symptoms of burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, and
reduced personal accomplishment) and 43.2% of the participants scored
in the intermediate range on two symptoms simultaneously.
3
In the cur-
rent research literature, job burnout has not been observed on a large scale
in some organizations. Even in the human services occupations, such as
teaching, in which job burnout occurs frequently and seriously, a 25% rate
is considered among the highest observed rates (Friedman & Farber, 1992).
Many scholars, including psychologists and sociologists, have worked
to defne job burnout and to identify its causes (e.g., Freudenberger, 1974;
Maslach, 1976; Schaufeli & Buunk, 2003). The symptoms of job burnout
are multi-dimensional, encompassing psychosomatic, somatic, and social
1
Address correspondence to Hong Chen, Room A506, School of Management, China
University of Mining and Technology, South Sanhuan Road, Xuzhou, China, 221116 or e-mail
(hongchenxz@cumt.edu.cn).
2
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.
70671101, No. 71173217) and Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of
Education of China (No. 10YJA630010) awarded to Hong Chen.
3
China Human Resources Development Network. (2008) Report on China stafs burnout
situation. Beijing: Author. Retrieved from http://www.chinahrd.net/news/info/34714.
H. CHEN, ET AL. 802
disorders (Weber & Jaekel-Reinhard, 2000), and the factors that contribute
to job burnout are varied. It is difcult to get a clear picture of job burn-
out from a global and structural perspective. This lack of clarity in defni-
tion, antecedents, and types presents an obstacle in the path of practical
research on job burnout. The purpose of this paper is to examine the gen-
eral antecedents framework of job burnout from a new perspective based
on diferent sets of factors including organization characteristics, work
characteristics, and individual characteristics, in order to explore the root
causes of job burnout theoretically, and to present a root cause-based clas-
sifcation of job burnout. The antecedents framework and classifcations
may be would be important and useful for organizations in establishing
efective intervention strategies for diferent types of job burnout in orga-
nizational or work groups in particular industries or among people with
specifc characteristics.
This paper is organized in four parts. Firstly, the previous literature
in job burnout is summarized. Secondly, the general framework of job
burnout antecedents with three relative contribution factors is assessed.
Thirdly, the three types of job burnout are positedorganizational weak-
ness-caused burnout, work weakness-caused burnout, and characteristic-
caused burnoutand contrasted with respect to seven characteristics of
burnout. Finally, some suggestions for research and possible applications
are presented.
The initial articles about burnout were written by Freudenberger in
1974 and Maslach in 1976. Subsequently, many scholars have contributed
to the research in job burnout and have promoted various defnitions. By
comparing the studies carried out by diferent scholars, three fundamen-
tals of job burnout were noted: participants characteristics, burnout situ-
ation, and root cause. Participants characteristics refer to the personal as-
pects of those studied sufering from job burnout, i.e., discrete individuals
or individuals in specifed groups. Burnout situation refers to the situa-
tion in which job burnout occurs. Root cause indicates the primary factors
leading to burnout. Table 1 lists these fundamentals of job burnout.
Based on typical studies of job burnout listed in Table 1, three points
can be summarized. (1) The participants in job burnout studies have been
selected from many organizations, including businesses, social services,
bureaucratic systems, and especially from among the staf of helping oc-
cupations like clinic staf, teachers, and policemen. (2) Job burnout is relat-
ed to intense and excessive emotional demand, job stressors and strains,
interpersonal stressors, and dysfunction of the work conditions. (3) Some
researchers have identifed causes of job burnout, such as workload and
role ambiguity, long-term involvement in a work environment, incongru-
ency and misft between the employees and work requirements. From
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TABLE 1
MULTI-DIMENSIONAL COMPARISON OF JOB BURNOUT RESEARCHES*
Defnition of Burnout Participants Burnout Situation Root Cause
1. Freudenberger

(1974)
To fail, wear out, or become exhausted by making excessive demands on energy,
strength, or resources.
Clinic staf Making excessive
demands
Not mentioned
2. Maslach & Jackson

(1981)
A prolonged response to chronic job stressors, which includes emotional exhaustion,
depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment.
Human services
professionals
Chronic job
stressors
Work environment
such as workload
and ambiguity
3. Cherniss (1980)
A process in which professionals attitudes and behavior change in negative ways in
response to job strain.
Human services Job strain Not mentioned
4. Pines, Aronson, & Kafry (1981)
A state of mind resulting from prolonged exposure to intense emotional stress and in-
volving three major components: physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion.
The helping
professions
Intense emotional
stress
Not mentioned
5. Brill

(1984)
Job-related, when adequate performance in a steady job situation turns into a dys-
phoric and dysfunctional state and recovery will not occur without external help or
organizational restructuring.
Not mentioned A dysphoric and
dysfunctional
job state
External cause-
rooted
6. Pines & Aronson (1988)
Found in situations that have been emotionally difcult for an extended time.
In business, social
service work, and
bureaucratic
organizations
Emotionally
difcult
situations
Individuals, work,
or the organiza-
tion
7. Schaufeli & Greenglass (2001)
A state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that results from long-term involve-
ment in work situations that are emotionally demanding.
In all occupations Emotionally de-
manding work
situations
Long-term involve-
ment in work
situations
8. Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter (2001)
A prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job and
is defned by three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefcacy.
People in a large
organizational
context
Chronic emotion-
al and interper-
sonal stressors on
the job
Not mentioned
9. Maslach (2003)
A psychological syndrome that involves a prolonged response to stressors in the
workplace. Specifcally, it involves chronic strain that results from an incongruence,
or misft, between the worker and the job.
Workers in many
human service
occupations
Stressors in the
workplace
An incongruence,
or misft, between
the worker and
the job
Note. Not mentioned means there is no information according to the research report.
H. CHEN, ET AL. 804
these can be gleaned clues about root factors that cause job burnout. For
example, misft of relation between employees and work requirements
means that there may be specifc individual characteristics (e.g., person-
ality factors) or work weaknesses (e.g., work design problems). However,
the root causes leading to burnout situations have not been recognized ex-
plicitly.
Based on the above defnition and summary, job burnout as studied
in previous research is induced by the misft between individual person-
ality and work or organizational characteristics. The exhaustion, cynicism,
reduced personal accomplishment, and other negative work attitudes
and behaviors will appear when the resources, owned by individuals or
gained from organization, cannot meet the work demand (Freudenberger,
1974; Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Pines & Aronson, 1988). Some employees
show job burnout symptoms much more often than others do in the same
work situation due to their particular personality traits. In this instance,
individual characteristics play a key role in causing job burnout. Some
scholars have pointed out external situation factors as the root cause of job
burnout (Brill, 1984), but whether organizational weakness or work weak-
ness can by themselves induce burnout has not been studied in detail.
In a questionnaire survey of 432 professional safety managers em-
ployed by Chinese coal mines, 77% of them showed commonly-sufered
4

job burnout symptoms that have no relation to personality traits (Qi, 2010).
Because the working environment and mining process have their own
special features, safety of coal mines is a public concern which requires ev-
eryones efort. Professional safety managers cannot reach expected per-
formance without the cooperation of others, no matter how many eforts
they make. As a result, they often feel helpless, and burnout symptoms
appear. The job burnout induced by lack of co-workers support and oth-
ers behavioral feedback is related to the environment of the organization
and work characteristics. This kind of job burnout, experienced by most
of the workers in a particular job across an industry, is somewhat diferent
from traditionally understood job burnout and is an example of an orga-
nizational weakness-caused burnout.
From what has been discussed above, some questions can be posed.
There are no systematic theoretical frameworks for the antecedents of
job burnout; diferent antecedent factors of job burnout mentioned by re-
searchers have not been discussed in an integrated conceptual system.
On the other hand, there is a trend for researchers to combine concepts
in empirical examinations of job burnout (Hellesy, Grnhaug, & Kvi-
tastein, 2000). Although the construct of job burnout proposed by some
4
We use commonly-sufered to describe the phenomenon that most of the safety managers
in Chinese coal mines experience job burnout, with occurrence rates close to 80% among the
group, which is far diferent from the data in previous literature.
NEW PERSPECTIVE ON JOB BURNOUT 805
scholars (Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Pines, Aronson, & Kafry, 1981; Demer-
outi, Bakker, Vardakou, & Kantas, 2002; Kristensen, Borritz, Villadsen,
& Christensen, 2005) has been carefully studied, diferences in job burn-
out pathology may be obscured by common superfcial symptoms like
emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion. Without a clear mechanism
for the development of job burnout, the conclusions of researchers may
be less useful to broad, practical applications like job burnout assessment
and intervention. To identify mechanisms of job burnout occurrence, an-
tecedent factors should be examined thoroughly.
ANALYSIS OF JOB BURNOUT ANTECEDENTS
Understanding the factors that may contribute to workers job burn-
out is the focus of prior research in a stage model of burnout (Lewandows-
ki, 2003). Some antecedents of job burnout, including characteristics of or-
ganizations, work, and individuals, have been mentioned and examined
in the burnout literature. The characteristics of these three sets of job burn-
out antecedents will be assessed in the following section.
Work Characteristics
Many researchers have investigated the work variables contributing
to job burnout. Maslach and Schaufeli (1993) declared that job factors are
the key predictors of the occurrence of emotional exhaustion. Schaufeli
and Buunk (2003) specifcally pointed out the possible reasons of job burn-
out included quantitative job demands, role problems, lack of social sup-
port, lack of self-regulatory activity, and client-related demands.
Theoretical and empirical studies are summarized for three categories
of work characteristics identifed as factors contributing to job burnout.
The frst work factor is job characteristics. Hackman and Oldham (1980)
proposed a model of job characteristics. This paper adopts their model
and hypothesizes that the job characteristics which may afect job burn-
out include fve core characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task signif-
cance, autonomy, and feedback. The frst three factors are related to the ex-
perienced psychological meaningfulness of work. Skill variety is defned
as the variety of talents and skills of the individuals required by the work
activities. Task identity is defned as the explicit job from beginning to end
and includes both the entire work and its parts. Task signifcance refers
to the efect of the job on peoples lives and work, both inside and out-
side of the organization. Autonomy encompasses the responsibility and
is defned as the independence, freedom, and discretion of a person in the
process of carrying out the work. Feedback is about the knowledge of re-
sults, which is defned as learning from the activities and consequences of
work. All of the fve characteristics of a job are correlated with the indi-
viduals perceptions and infuence the physical and psychological status
of the person.
H. CHEN, ET AL. 806
The second work characteristic is workload, which includes quanti-
tative and qualitative demands. Quantitative workload is related to the
total amount of tasks required in the job; qualitative workload is related
to the complexity of work required for an arranged quantitative work-
load (Shaw & Weekly, 1985). Quantitative workload is afected by a lack
of physical strength and energy to do ones work in the allotted time, and
qualitative workload is afected by a lack of the basic skills or talents for
efective performance (Kahn, 1978; Pines & Maslach, 1978). Kouvonen,
Toppinen-Tanner, Kivist, Huuhtanen, and Kalimos study (2005) showed
that higher quantitative overload was associated with higher exhaustion
in a sample size of 115 participants ranging from 49 to 61 years old.
Role characteristic is the third important factor in job burnout and
comprises role confict and role ambiguity. Role confict means that one
is in a situation in which multiple and incompatible expectations exist
(Kahn, 1978). Role ambiguity results from the lack of sufcient informa-
tion about performance of required job activities (Fimian & Blanton, 1987).
Schaufeli and Buunk (2003) pointed out that both role confict and role
ambiguity contribute signifcantly to job burnout.
Organizational Characteristics
The concept of job burnout was embedded within the environment
of U.S. society, economy, and culture of the 1960s (Schaufeli, Leiter, &
Maslach, 2009). Job burnout has been a social problem in economic global-
ization. Organizations are all infuenced by the external macroscopic cul-
ture and regulations, but also have unique features.
Many scholars have studied the relation of work characteristics with
job burnout, but the reality is that work inevitably occurs within some or-
ganizational structure. Organizations have hierarchies, operational rules,
and allocation of resources; these features of work should not be ignored.
Other scholars have extended their research into organizational and man-
agement environments which induce job burnout. Maslach and Leiters
study (1997) showed that the structure and processes of organizations
were moderately to highly correlated with job burnout. In those cases,
burnout was much more a symptom of an organizations dysfunctional
structure or process rather than that of the employed individual (Leiter &
Maslach, 2001).
Organizational characteristics comprise multiple dimensions includ-
ing systems, contexts, and resources. System characteristics of organiza-
tions that may afect the job burnout include organizational size, structure,
and ownership. Moos (1986) argued that the larger an organization is, the
greater the likelihood of burnout. Dekker and Barling (1995) believed in-
dividuals might feel less valued in large organizations because the high-
NEW PERSPECTIVE ON JOB BURNOUT 807
ly formalized policies and procedures in a large corporation may reduce
fexibility in dealing with employees individual needs. Vallen (1993) ex-
amined the correlation of job burnout and organizational structure in the
healthcare industry and found that employees of organizations with un-
cooperative teams, employee distrust, and strongly held command exhib-
ited signifcantly much more job burnout.
As to the relation of organizational ownership with job burnout, there
is some empirical evidence in the study of Hansen, Sverke, and Nswall
(2009) which showed that nurses at private and for-proft hospitals have
higher job burnout scores, compared to nurses at publicly administered
hospitals.
Context includes values and fairness. Schaufeli, et al. (2009) consid-
ered the confict between stated and actual values between employees and
an organization, as well as between organizations, was a reason for job
burnout. There are diferent types of value conficts, such as confict be-
tween the job ethics and personal values, between personal aspirations for
a career and the values of an organization. Furthermore, fairness indicates
a culture of respect and confrms employees self-esteem within the orga-
nization. Maslach, et al. (2001) argued that lack of fairness exacerbates job
burnout in two ways: severe emotional upset and exhaustion, which can
lead to a deep sense of cynicism. Li and Shi (2003) explored the relation of
organizational fairness with job burnout of medical care personnel in Chi-
na and concluded that it explained the 37% variance of emotional exhaus-
tion, 18% variance of depersonalization, and 12% variance of personal ac-
complishment respectively.
Organizational resources include the social support and salary pay
system. Lee and Ashforth (1996) studied the association of job demands
and resources, showing that lack of support from supervisors or co-work-
ers can cause job burnout to diferent extents. Yeh, Cheng, and Chen (2009)
proved that employees earning performance-based and piece-rated pay
systems sufered greater burnout, while those who were given fxed sala-
ries showed less burnout.
In addition, some other important organizational weaknesses lead-
ing to job burnout have been identifed in the Chinese coal mining indus-
try. Safety of coal mines is a less important target of the organization com-
pared to economic targets. Therefore, there is an apparent confict between
safety and economic goals. Nearly 80% of professional safety managers
reported job burnout caused by the failure of cooperation and coordina-
tion and the structural weakness of the work system. Coal mine safety, as
an important organizational output depending on the whole employees
contribution, is designed as a direct task of professional safety managers
in China (Qi, 2010).
H. CHEN, ET AL. 808
Individual Characteristics
It is not surprising that a majority of studies about job burnout have
focused on occupation-related characteristics, since burnout is defned as
a job-related mental state (Maslach, et al., 2001). However, diferent em-
ployees may show diferening severities of job burnout within the same
occupation. Maslach, et al. (2001) argued that job burnout is not merely
a product of the work environment, but also is afected by individuals
unique qualities operating in the work. Maslach and Jackson (1981) in-
cluded demographics as individual diferences in job burnout (e.g., age)
specifcally as important determinants of emotional exhaustion. In addi-
tion, a limited number of personality characteristics have been studied
(Zellars, Perrew, & Hochwarter, 2000). The consideration of personality
in relation to job burnout has not been comprehensive.
In current research, individual factors of interest comprise demo-
graphic characteristics, personality attributes, and substance use. Demo-
graphic variables have included sex, age, marital status, educational back-
ground, and years of work; however, there is still some argument about
the relation of demographic characteristics with job burnout. Etzion and
Pines (1986) claimed that women reported greater burnout than men, but
Burke and Greenglass (1989) found that male teachers reported greater job
burnout than female teachers. When personality characteristics are ana-
lyzed, traits, behavioral characteristics, personal expectations, and work
attitudes are mentioned frequently.
What is certain is that in the same organization or professional en-
vironment, the number of individuals sufering job burnout is typically
rather small. This implies that personal characteristics are a major deter-
minant of job burnout.
Substance use including alcohol and smoking also has a high corre-
lation with job burnout. Cunradi, Chen, and Lipton (2009) explored this
relation in a survey of transit operators in the San Francisco Municipal
Railway (MUNI). In their study, substance use was measured by smok-
ing status and alcohol consumption, both in the past and present period
of participators. Rubington (1984) studied the job burnout of recovered
alcoholic staf employed by an alcohol detoxifcation center. They found
that if this type of person was employed as a counselor, they were at much
higher risk of sufering from burnout than other employees in the detoxi-
fcation center.
THREE TYPES OF JOB BURNOUT BASED ON ROOT CAUSES
The framework of job burnout antecedents comprises three sets of fac-
tors: organizational characteristics (e.g., systems, context, and resource),
work characteristics (e.g., job type, workload, and role), and individual
characteristics (e.g., demographic, personality, and substance use). Based
NEW PERSPECTIVE ON JOB BURNOUT 809
on these, we propose that job burnout has three subcomponents: work
weakness-caused burnout, organizational weakness-caused burnout, and
individual characteristic-caused burnout.
Work Weakness-caused Burnout
Work weakness-caused burnout is prolonged physical and psycholog-
ical symptoms experienced as a result of the persons work characteristics.
Work weakness-caused burnout is not only related to the helping profes-
sions, but also can occur in other occupational sectors. The relation of job
burnout to work context has been examined in several studies. Skaalvik
and Skaalvik (2009) confrmed the relation of perception of the school con-
text with teachers job burnout, which is caused by time pressures. Maslach
and Jackson

(1981) showed that the workload quantity, role ambiguity, and
other work situations afected individuals emotional, physical and men-
tal exhaustion. Maslach

(2003) regarded interpersonal dynamics and job-
person ft as dominating work factors that contribute to job burnout. The
combination of organizational arrangement (e.g., workload and training)
and individual efort (e.g., work schedules, skills, and position in the orga-
nization) may alleviate the work weakness-caused burnout.
Organizational Weakness-caused Burnout
Organizational weakness-caused burnout is related to the stressors
in the organizational environment; particularly, the misft between the
employee and organization.
5
Tracy (2000) considered job burnout to be
largely an organizational issue associated with long hours, supervision
and other factors. Organizational weakness-caused burnout was afected
by characteristics such as systems, context and resources, and is associat-
ed with symptoms like lower organizational commitment, demotivation,
service-sabotage behaviors, and high turnover. It should be noted that or-
ganizational weakness-caused burnout is very destructive. It can afect
everyone in the organization and harm the organizations efectiveness.
When there are signs of job burnout symptoms, the organization should
look for the stressors in the organizational situation and remedy the prob-
lems immediately. Without general organizational support and assistance,
individuals are unable to alleviate the organizational weakness-caused
burnout themselves.
Individual Characteristic-caused Burnout
Individual characteristic-caused burnout is unrelated to other people
5
Person-job ft is the relation of the employee to assignments or tasks that are implemented
at work, and person-organization ft means the compatibility between individuals and
entire organizations (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson 2005). Although the individual
employee may ft the job very well for the suitable work pattern, they may show misft with
the organization for the unsuitable culture, like interpersonal relationships or communication
modes, etc.
H. CHEN, ET AL. 810
or external factors in the workplace; rather, it is based on stressors relat-
ed to individual characteristics, such as personality and lifestyle. Fischer
(1983) conceived that job burnout is primarily an intrapsychic phenome-
non. Employees with certain characteristics are more likely to experience
burnout than others in the same working situations. In specifc, Maslach
(2005) confrmed that people who score high on neuroticism are prone
to psychological distress, which means that such people may be more at
risk in sufering job burnout. Thus, individual characteristic-caused burn-
out can be related to job burnout and is rooted in specifc personal char-
acteristics. It stands to reason that although job burnout is experienced
and is usually studied in the work environment, individual characteristic-
caused burnout would be found in non-work environments as well (e.g.,
in students, stay-at-home mothers, early-retired individuals, etc.).
The three types of job burnout: work weakness-caused burnout, or-
ganizational weakness-caused burnout, and individual characteristic-
caused burnout connecting to the framework of antecedents including
work, organization, and individual characteristics are shown in Fig. 1.
COMPARISON OF THREE TYPES OF JOB BURNOUT
For a better understanding of the meaning of three types of job burn-
out, organizational weakness-caused burnout, work weakness-caused
burnout, and individual characteristic-caused burnout are discussed in
terms of seven aspects according to the process of burnout development.
The process includes occurrence, intrinsic quality, efect, and difculty of
dealing with job burnout.
Occurrence of job burnout describes the initial stage in which burnout
begins. From a view of diferent root causes, availability refers to the status
of individuals with diferent psychological characteristics, which show re-
sistance or susceptibility to job burnout. Intrinsic quality of job burnout
describes the key diferences of three types of job burnout, including con-
cealment and universality. Efects of job burnout describes the possible in-
fuence on individual and interpersonal status. Severity, duration, and dif-
fusibility are used to describe the efects of burnout. As the end phase of
the process, changeability is used to refect the difculty of alleviating job
burnout by dealing with the root causes. In Fig. 2, the three types of job
burnout are compared in detail with respect to these seven aspects and
within the context of the development of job burnout.
Availability
Availability is defned as the resistance to or susceptibility to burnout,
which is connected with the characteristics of the work, organization, and
individual. Dekker and Barling (1995) examined the relationship between
work characteristics (workforce size, work-role stressors) and organiza-
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1
Work
characteristics
Job burnout
Organizational weakness-caused burnout
Individual
characteristics
System
characteristics
organizational size
organizational structure
Context
characteristics
Resource

characteristics
Fairness
Social support
Pay system
organizational ownership
Value
Job
characteristics
autonomy
feedback
role conflict
role ambiguity
qualitative workload
quantitative workload Demographic
characteristics
sex, age, marital status, education
working years,wage,duty
Personality
characteristics
Substance use
working attitude
smoking
alcohol
personality traits
behavior characteristics
personal expectation
Broad social, economic, and cultural environment
Mechanism
weakness
Work
design
weakness
Workload
Role
characteristics
task significance
skill variety
task identity
Work weakness-caused burnout
Individual characteristics-caused burnout
organizational multi-targets
Personal
characteristics
Organizational
characteristics
FIG. 1. Theoretical connections among job burnout types and antecedents
H
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T

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L
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8
1
2
Job burnout
Availability
Concealment Universality
Effect of
job burnout
Difficulty of dealing
with job burnout
Diffusibility Changeability Severity Duration
Occurrence of
job burnout
Intrinsic quality of job burnout
FIG. 2. Seven aspects in relation to the development of job burnout
NEW PERSPECTIVE ON JOB BURNOUT 813
tional characteristics (objective and perceived organizational support).
The participants were 112 clerical staf coming from isolated business or-
ganizations with less than 500 employees. The results of empirical stud-
ies showed that workforce size was positively correlation with role of con-
fict (r = .25) and ambiguity (r = .31). Workforce size exhibited a substantial
positive association with objective support (r = .58) and negative associa-
tion with subjective consciousness of organizational support (r = .31). It
showed that job burnout related more directly to work activities than to
organizational policy. The aspect typical of work weakness-caused burn-
out is quantitative overload. Maslach, et al. (2001) proposed that job burn-
out is a symptom of a dysfunctional organization and much more related
to the workplace environment than the specifc employees. Lee and Ash-
forths study (1996) examined the correlations of work demands, individ-
ual behaviors and attitudes, and organizational factors to the three dimen-
sions of burnout in a sample of 61 studies reviewed using a meta-analysis.
The results showed that fve of eight job stressors were strongly (r
c
s > .50)
connected with emotional exhaustion. Only two of 18 organizational re-
sources factors showed relatively strong correlations (community bond,
.48; unmet expectations, .53) with job burnout. As to individual factors,
three of six behavioral and attitudinal outcomes were correlative to job
burnout (r
c
s < .45). This indicates that individuals are most likely to expe-
rience work weakness-caused burnout, while organizational weakness-
caused burnout and individual characteristic-caused burnout are the least
likely to be experienced.
Concealment
Concealment refers to how easily job burnout can be detected in a
particular group or organization. According to Etzion (1987), continuous,
barely recognizable, and for the most part denied, misft between personal
and environmental characteristics is the source of a slow and hidden pro-
cess of psychological erosion. Unlike other stressful phenomena, the mini
stressors of misft do not cause alarm and are rarely subject to any coping
eforts. Thus, the process of erosion can go on for a long time without be-
ing detected (pp. 16-17). In contrast, work weakness-caused burnout is
much easier to detect since it is caused by the content of work that can be
observed clearly. Individual characteristic-caused burnout is the most dif-
fcult to detect, or perhaps has not been studied efectively as a predictor
due to lack of theory or structure for hypotheses of complex interactions
between personality and work or organization.
Universality
Universality refers to the proportions of people experiencing the dif-
ferent types of job burnout in the working population studied. When
H. CHEN, ET AL. 814
examining the organization as the basic unit, organizational weakness-
caused burnout is due to the organizational environment and policies,
which afect all employees of the organization. When the focus is work
weakness-caused burnout, typical causes are poorly conceived job de-
scriptions and duties as arranged by the organization, so this kind of job
burnout is seen in only the proportion of employees afected by such job
descriptions and expectations.
Universality is not only related to the scope of burnout causes, but also
to the job burnout availability. The proportion of people experiencing in-
dividual characteristic-caused burnout should be smaller than those expe-
riencing the other two types of job burnout. From a view of the defnition
and theoretical explanation, the universality of work weakness-caused
burnout with segmental features is smaller than that of organizational
weakness-caused burnout with holistic features. The universality of or-
ganizational weakness-caused burnout is common in Chinese coal mines,
as noted by Qi (2010). It is the consequence of organizational design and
safety regulation failure. The accurate comparison on universality of these
three types of burnout may need more empirical research in other employ-
ment scenarios and among employees of various backgrounds.
Severity
Severity refers to the extent and consequences of job burnout. Some
scholars have explored the consequences of job burnout. Maslach, et al.
(2001) showed that job burnout was not only associated with various
forms of withdrawal but also associated with individual employees men-
tal health. Specifcally, individuals experiencing job burnout may sufer
from physical illnesses, sleep disturbances, work and family confict, or
substance abuse. Organizations are also afected by employees job burn-
out, which is likely to result in increased turnover, absenteeism, a decreas-
ing client base, and reduced job performance (Swider & Zimmerman,
2010). There is no doubt that job burnout is harmful to individuals and
organizations simultaneously. Individual characteristic-caused burnout
is the most serious matter and should be reduced by psychological and
behavioral intervention. Organizational weakness-caused burnout may
have higher severity than work weakness-caused burnout because it is re-
lated to organizational culture and values. For the organization, this is the
most serious problem, followed by work weakness-caused burnout and
individual characteristic-caused burnout.
Duration
Duration refers to how long job burnout symptoms last. Because of
the relative stability of individual characteristics, individual character-
istic-caused burnout would be expected to last longest. Organization-
NEW PERSPECTIVE ON JOB BURNOUT 815
al weakness-caused burnout is associated with organizational culture or
policies, so it may last for a long time without organizational reform (van
Dierendonck, Schaufeli, & Buunk, 1998). Work weakness-caused burnout
is associated with specifc duties or tasks and potentially has the shortest
duration. Westman and Etzion (2001) examined the infuence of job pres-
sure and vacation on tension in a sample of 87 blue-collar workers in an
industrial frm in central Israel. The results showed that burnout symp-
toms diminished after the holiday and returned to the previous level four
weeks later.
Difusibility
The individuals burnout-related behaviors have wide-reaching ef-
fects on those in the environment, such as cooperating employees, clients,
etc. According to Maslach, et al. (2001), job burnout can spread among in-
dividuals through personal conficts, disruption of tasks, and so on. Gen-
erally, individuals within the same organizational environment are more
likely to be afected by organizational weakness-caused burnout and dif-
fusibility is therefore high. Because individual characteristics are very
resistant to change, the difusibility of individual characteristic-caused
burnout is low. Work weakness-caused burnout is related to work charac-
teristics and appears only in similar jobs, so difusibility should be inter-
mediate compared to the other two job burnout types.
Changeability
Changeability refers to the difculty of recovering from job burnout if
the external context changes. Brill (1984) claimed that if there were no ex-
ternal assistance or organizational restructuring, recovery from job burn-
out would not occur. If this is true, then given the stability of an individ-
uals characteristics, individual characteristic-caused burnout would not
be dealt with easily even when the environment changes. Organizational
weakness-caused burnout is more about the misft between the organiza-
tion (e.g., culture and values) and the individual. Typically, the organiza-
tional culture and values are stable and difcult to change, so employees
organizational weakness-caused burnout would be impossible to change
according to Brill (1984). In contrast, work weakness-caused burnout is
related directly to job content, so when job demands decrease and job re-
sources increase, the employees work weakness-caused burnout should
be easily relieved. Thus, work weakness-caused burnout can be changed
most easily, and individual characteristic-caused burnout would be the
most difcult to change; organizational weakness-caused job burnout
may be impossible to resolve at all. The comparison of the three types of
job burnout and the seven aspects are shown in Table 2 with respect to
stages of development of job burnout.
H. CHEN, ET AL. 816
FURTHER STUDY AND LIMITATIONS
Implications for Further Study
It is important and essential to distinguish the root causes of burnout.
The three types of burnout can be classifed by root causes, especially by
organizational weakness and work weakness, and thus contribute to fur-
ther research on job burnout.
In conclusion, the proposals herein will make study on job burnout
more systematic and specifc. The systematic analysis framework of burn-
out antecedents can be used as a foundation for further empirical studies.
It also can be used as the guide and principle of research design. The seven
aspects ofer a new perspective on job burnout, which make it possible to
study and analyze the process of burnout more deeply.
Limitations
One limitation is that the conclusions in this paper mainly come
from the theoretical and logical deduction based on literature reviewed.
Although these conclusions are empirically supported in the collectivist
Chinese culture and particularly in the coal mining industry in China, it
should be applied and verifed in cross-cultural studies and various in-
dustries.
Another limitation is that job burnout has only been discussed in a
TABLE 2
COMPARISON OF THREE TYPES OF JOB BURNOUT ON SEVEN ASPECTS
Aspects Organizational
Weakness-
caused Burnout
Work Weak-
ness-caused
Burnout
Individual
Characteristic-
caused Burnout
Availability: the resistance to burnout or
susceptibility to it. medium strong weak
Concealment: how easily job burnout can
be detected in a particular group or
organization. medium weak strong
Universality: the proportions of people
experiencing job burnout in the working
population studied. strong medium weak
Severity: the extent and consequences of job burnout.
Individual medium medium strong
Organizational strong medium weak
Duration: how long job burnout
symptoms last. medium medium strong
Difusibility: impact of job burnout on
those in the environment, such as
cooperating employees, clients, etc. strong medium weak
Changeability: the degree of difculty
of recovering from job burnout if the
external contexts change. medium strong weak
NEW PERSPECTIVE ON JOB BURNOUT 817
work context; a wide scope of studies concerning the relation of family
and social variables should be undertaken. That is one of the directions
and tasks of further research.
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