A Causal Model of Burnout Among Self-Managed Work Team Members

Abstract The findings on burnout that are almost universally from research in service settings are applied to an industrial setting with self-managed work teams. Researchers formulated several hypotheses on the basis of this literature. These hypotheses were then used to develop a structural (causal) model that was tested and refined using LISREL 8. Data were collected from 320 employees concerning perceptions of several job and organization conditions, as well as the three components of burnout. Results indicated that role conflict contributed to emotional exhaustion, and participation in work teams diminished it. Job ambiguity, low co-worker support, and low job ability contributed to feelings of low personal accomplishment. These results were consistent with previous findings. When insufficient time to complete a job was removed from the workload measures, workload actually diminished burnout, a finding opposite from previous research. Other organization factors had no significant impact on burnout in this setting.

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