Interpersonal Mistreatment at Work and Burnout among Teachers

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe current study aims to investigate how various forms of interpersonal mistreatment in the workplace (i.e., abusive supervision, ostracism, undermining, incivility, and unwanted sexual attention) relate to dimensions of burnout (i.e., exhaustion, cynicism, and professional inefficacy). More specifically, we argue within the frame of the Conservation of Resources Theory and Job Demands - Resources Model (JD-R; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001) that high levels of interpersonal mistreatment, viewed as interpersonal demands at work, are important antecedents of high levels of burnout, even when personality factors (i.e., conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness) are taken into account. Romanian teachers (N = 193) participated in this study by filling out set of questionnaires. Our hypotheses were tested using hierarchical multiple regression analyses, while controlling for age, gender, and personality factors. Relative weights analyses were conducted to determine the explained variance of the multiple predictors. As expected, interpersonal workplace mistreatment associated positively with burnout dimensions. Moreover, interpersonal workplace mistreatment was linked to unique variance in burnout dimensions, over and above personality factors. Interestingly, relative weights analyses indicated ostracism as the mistreatment type which accounted for the highest amount of variance in all burnout dimensions. In practice, the current results bring additional value when investigating ways to reduce burnout in teachers.KEYWORDS: resilience, neuroticism, coping strategies, social support, personalityINTRODUCTIONBurnout is an important concern for organizations, since it was shown to be related to detrimental consequences for individuals and organizations, such as increased employee turnover (e.g., Laschinger, Leiter, Day, & Gilin, 2009; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004), low job performance (Wright & Hobfoll, 2004), and health problems (e.g., Schaufeli, Leiter, & Maslach, 2009). Burnout is defined as a crisis in one's relationship with work, not necessarily as crisis in one's relationship with people at (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996 as cited in Schaufeli & Taris, 2005, p. 258). Considering all types of professions, burnout is conceptualized as having three dimensions that refer to the job in general, not just to the personal relationships that represent part of person's job (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). More specifically, burnout has three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, referring to tiredness related to various work aspects, cynicism, referring to the way individuals are mentally distancing themselves from their work, and professional inefficacy, defined as sense of low accomplishment at work (Schaufeli & Taris, 2005).For more than three decades, managers and researchers have focused their attention on identifying personal and situational antecedents for burnout in various occupations (Schaufeli et al., 2009). Within the narrower confines of the educational field, research has convincingly proven that the interaction with students often leads to stress and burnout among teachers (Taris, Van Horn, Schaufeli, & Schreurs, 2004). In addition to that, attrition rates for teachers were found to be very high, reaching six to eight per cent per year, with half of all teachers expected to leave the educational system within seven years (Wisniewski & Gargiuto, 1997). Moreover, previous studies also indicated that teachers suffer from health problems as result of burnout (Guglielmi & Tatrow, 1998). Vladut and Kallay (2011) argued that burnout is prevalent phenomenon among Romanian teachers and has detrimental consequences. Among these consequences we can count increased levels of stress, anxiety, depression, feelings of inefficacy in their teaching activity, and negative perceptions of their organizational environment. …