EFFECT OF JOB BURNOUT

ON EMPLOYEE
PERFORMANCE
A LITERATURE REVIEW

PRESENTED BY

AKINPELU ABIOLA
200375017

EFFECT OF JOB BURNOUT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

Abstract
This article attempts to understand the effect of Job burnout on employee performance in an
organization as well as gain concrete evidence on the result. This paper has also reviewed
previous research carried out on Job burnout and work performance. In order to do this, we
identified a target article and compared the findings with five other related literature. The studies
were able to identify a relationship between job burnout and employee performance however
there were different results on what dimension of Job burnout has more effect on work
performance.
Introduction
Job burnout has been a source of concern for many researchers due to its implication for
individuals and the organization as a whole.
Organizations are constantly faced with rapid changes in development and the need to keep up
with these changes in order to compete effectively among their contemporaries. In the light of
these changes, more responsibilities are placed on employees therefore, they are under pressure
to meet up with the expectations of their employers which in turn increases the stress levels of
employees in their workplace. Job burnout can be described as the response to the emotional and
interpersonal stress of ones job over a period of time (Maslach et al 2001).
This paper aims to review the previous studies carried out to analyze the effect of Job burnout as
well as its impact on employee performance. For the aim of this literature review, the target
article is The Study on the Effects of Organizational members Job burnout.

Search Strategy
With the aid of the University database, a search was conducted in ABI Inform, Google Scholar
as well as Web of Science using the keywords Job Burnout Performance where I was able to
identify suitable articles by reviewing their abstract while focusing on studies of employees. I
also identified five related articles in addition to the target article. This was in order to ensure the
reliability of the findings in the target article as well as establish if the target article has
adequately addressed the impact of Job burnout on employee performance.

Summary of Target Article

The target article The Study on the Effects of Organizational members Job Burnout by (Kwag
and Kim 2009) explained that various studies and different measures have been developed by
researchers on Job burnout. The most popular measure developed was the Maslach Burnout
Inventory (MBI) which was developed by Maslach and Jackson in 1981. Another study was
developed in 1986 which was the MBI Human Services Survey for employees in the Human
Service industry which was developed by Maslach, Jackson and Leiter. In order to expand the
study of Job burnout to all industries, Maslach et al (1996) developed the MBI General Survey
(MBI-GS).
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EFFECT OF JOB BURNOUT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

Researchers have expressed opinions on the psychometric limitation of Maslach Burnout

Inventory (MBI) as it focuses only on the affective component of exhaustion but failed to
consider the physical and the cognitive component in order to capture exhaustion as a result of
stress. Demerouti, Bakker, Kantas, and Vardakou in 2002 developed a similar scale to MBI
named the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory which measures only two scales namely exhaustion
and disengagement.
According to the target article, the phase and the sequential model remains the major model in
the study of Job burnout. The phase model postulates that there are three components of job
burnout which include; inefficacy, depersonalization and exhaustion. The sequential model,
however argued that there are sequences to the phases of burnout which starts from exhaustion
and proceeds to cynicism which leads to inefficacy. Two hypotheses were developed for the test
which include;
Hypothesis
For the effect of burnout on performance, the components of Job burnout identified were
exhaustion and disengagement asspecified inthe Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) wasused.
The Hypotheses are as follows;
Hypothesis1: Organizational members job burnout will be more negatively associated with Job
performance
Hypothesis 1a: Organizational members exhaustion will be more negatively associated with Job
performance.
Hypothesis 1b: Organizational members disengagement will be more negatively associated with
Job performance.
In the Korean cities of Busan and Gyeongnam, questionnaires were administered to Korean
employees for the practical analysis of the study. Out of which 100 were returned but three were
found unsuitable as a result of some unanswered questions in the questionnaire. The target article
used the following statistical techniques in their study which include the following; descriptive
analysis, reliability test, factor analysis, discriminate analysis, correlation analysis, multiregression analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis(Kwag and Kim 2009).

Critical Analysis of Target Article

From the result of the analysis, Hypothesis 2a cannot be supported based on the result (=-0.065,
p>0.1).Result from Hypothesis 2b, however shows a negative relationship of (=-0.335,
p<0.001). We can conclude that disengagement as a result of job burnout was found to have
some of relationship to low performance.
Although the study shows a relationship between job disengagement and performance, there
seems to be no relationship between exhaustion and performance.

EFFECT OF JOB BURNOUT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

A limitation of the research is a small sample size, therefore one cannot generalize from a sample
of a hundred questionnaire. Also, only two communities had access to the questionnaire which
shows that the opinions expressed only represents a few people in the community.
Another limitation of the study is that it failed to analyze other factors that may be responsible
for Job burnout.
For the purpose of future research, other qualitative methods should be adopted to ensure the
reliability of the study carried out.
Analyses of Other Related Studies
A meta-analysis study conducted by Zimmerman and Swider (2010), which aimed to analyze the
dimensions of job burnout (personal accomplishment, depersonalization and emotional
exhaustion) and its attendant effect on job performance. The study identified 115 research studies
carried out the authors analyzed the dimensions of job burnout which include; emotional
exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment in relation to job performance. The
result revealed three dimensions of job burnout had a combined correlation value of 0.36 with
job performance. Also, the study analyzed whether the relationship between job burnout and
performance were task specific or of general performance measure.
In another study which focused on the antecedents and effects of Job burnout among Services
Personnel in India. The study analyzed the different dimensions of burnout (emotional
exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment) in relation to individual
performance developing an individual hypothesis. Two hundred questionnaires were
administered to software professionals working in different firms but 75 questionnaires were
used for the analysis. All the variables were measured using a Likert scale. Reliability
measurement was used for the variables in the study with the aid of Cronbach Alpha values
Alpha estimates varied from 0.6014 for depersonalization and 0.8465 for emotional exhaustion.
From the results of the study, the hypotheses were predicted right except for emotional
exhaustion which tends to improve performance as a result of the need for employees to prove
their worth in the workplace. (Advani, Jagdale, Garg and Kumar 2005).
Also in a longitudinal study conducted by Wright and Bonnet (1997) to understand the
relationship between burnout and performance, they measured the dimensions of job burnout in
relation to performance sing the following hypotheses;
Hypothesis 1: Emotional exhaustion is negatively related to subsequent work performance
Hypothesis 2: Feelings of depersonalization is related to subsequent work performance
Hypothesis 3: Feelings of diminished personal accomplishment is related to subsequent work
performance
The subjects in the study were Professional staff in a public sector whose data was collected
over a two time period (Initial period and third year). The subjects were between the ages of 29
and 68 years. The job burnout data was collected at T1 however the organizations performance
review which is the basis for measuring work performance was collected at T1 and T2. From the
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EFFECT OF JOB BURNOUT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

result of the test performed, there was a negative relationship between emotional exhaustion and
work performance with a correlation of -0.31. To eliminate the effect of a third variable since the
subjects differed in age, a regression analysis was conducted. The result showed that R2 was
0.05 (t = -1.794; df = 39; p < 0.05) which shows that emotional exhaustion accounts for
subsequent performance beyond what was accounted for by age, gender and previous
performance. The results for the other hypotheses 2 &3 showed that there was no significant
relationship between depersonalization, and work performance as well as personal
accomplishment and work performance with a result of T2 (r =-0.19) T2 (r = -0.03)
respectively.
A cross-sectional study of the relationship between job burnout and performance conducted by
Ashtari, Farhady and Khodaee (2009) among 100 Iranian mental health professionals with the
aid of a questionnaire, the result showed a high positive correlation between job burnout and
inability perform with a correlation coefficient of r = 0.64. The burnout components also
showed a similar result with a positive correlation coefficient of (r = 0.6) between emotional
exhaustion and inability to perform, (r =0.57) between depersonalization and inability to perform
and a correlation of (r = 0.66) between the feeling of achievement failure and inability to
perform. The result of the study shows that burnout inhibits performance.
In the concluding study conducted by Bakker, Demerouti and Verbeke (2005), the authors
identified the different burnout configuration which includes; totally burned out group, nonburned out group and three moderately burned out groups with the aid of a cluster analysis. They
also established a relationship between the burnout configuration and in-role as well as extrarole performance. The sample was collected from 616 employees and managers from different
business sectors in Netherlands. The results of the study analyzed with ANOVA showed that
employees who were burned out had a low in-role and extra role performance however
employees who were moderately burned out employees showed a rather interesting result. The
depersonalized employees scored high in their respective job description as well as exhibited
organizational and attended to their customers needs but they were emotionally detached from
them. Also, employees who had a high level of emotional exhaustion but low level of the other
dimensions of burnout reported a high level of in-role and extra role performance which is due to
pressure to achieve their goals as well as the organizations goals. However, those that had low
personal accomplishment also reported low on in-role and extra-role performance despite that
they were neither emotionally exhausted nor depersonalized.

Discussion on Findings
The target article identified two dimensions of job burnout namely; emotional exhaustion,
disengagement which has been measured in relation to job performance. Other articles however
identified three dimensions of job burnout in relation to performance. Although the target article
could not support the effect of emotional exhaustion on performance, however the authors were
able to identify a negative relationship between employee disengagement and job performance.

EFFECT OF JOB BURNOUT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

In the context of the other literature reviewed, the results of the studies yielded different results
as to the effects of job burnout on work performance. Although all results of the studies show a
relationship between job burnout and work performance, there are differing results on what
dimensions of job burnout that has a significant relationship with performance.
Some studies showed that emotional exhaustion improves performance while other studies were
unable to conclude on a relationship between them.
Majority of the results showed that depersonalization has a negative effect on performance which
is consistent with the result of the target article apart from the result of the study which was
evaluated in line with the configurations of burnout which showed that depersonalized staff still
performed well although they were emotionally disconnected from the work.
Although the target article did not evaluate personal accomplishment in relation to performance
however, the other studies showed that employees who had low personal accomplishment also
had low performance at work.
From the results of the study, it shows that job burnout may not have a direct effect on
performance as there are other factors which may interfere such as; commitment to the
organization and the need to measure up to ones colleagues. Also, individual personalities may
also play an important role in determining performance in the face of job burnout.
Limitation
The limitation of this study is the small sample used by most of the researchers which makes it
difficult to generalize.
Also, the respondents rated their performance by themselves which may not be an objective way
of measuring performance. Employee performance should have been rated by the employees
manager or supervisor.
Conclusion
Based on the analysis of the literature review, there is a need to conduct more research in the
field of burnout especially as it relates to performance. Also more longitudinal study should be
carried out in order to adequately assess employees burnout level over a period of time.
There is also the need to make use of larger sample size in order to generalize across population
as well as make use of larger sample size in order to generalize across population.
Finally, more research done on job burnout configuration in relation to work performance. This
will enable researchers to gain better understanding on burnout as it is a dynamic concept.

EFFECT OF JOB BURNOUT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

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