Burnout is considered to be a disease of our time, as media report increasingly on the prevalence and impact it has on people’s lives. This is mirrored by the advances in research where, since its inception in the last few... [ view full abstract ]
Burnout is considered to be a disease of our time, as media report increasingly on the prevalence and impact it has on people’s lives. This is mirrored by the advances in research where, since its inception in the last few decades of the previous century (Maslach 1982), research developments have been accumulating (Schaufeli and Taris 2014). One of the most important advances has been without any doubt the development of the job demands-resources model (JDR), which has been dominant in framing burnout questions within organizations (Bakker et al 2017). Nevertheless, there are a number of areas that remain under-researched.
One of such areas is the specificity of the public service, despite the observation that burnout research was initiated by the observation that various types of public servants such as teachers, nurses and police officers were confronted by burnout symptoms (Maslach 1982). It has only been recently that one of the most characteristic drivers of public service behavior – public service motivation (PSM) – has been identified as playing a role in the process of burnout (Giauque et al 2012; Van Loon et al 2015). Moreover, these empirical studies do not fully mesh with the conception of PSM that has been developed within the framework of the JDR, as Bakker (2015) has conceived it as a personal resource, whereas the two studies mentioned earlier observed it to be operating as demand, at least in some conditions. Preliminary studies (Vandenabeele et al 2014 & 2017) identified that educational level and in particular professional identification played a moderating role in the relationship between PSM and burnout. In particular in situations of work pressure, the public service motivated employees with high education or high levels of professionalism tend to demonstrate a higher burnout risk than those with lower levels of the former.
This proposal would like to develop this further, as both aforementioned studies have only limited measures of professionalism. Whereas the previous studies only used employment grade or professional identification as a proxy for professionalism, the present study develops this concept more extensively. Professionalism (Hall 1968; Snizek 1972) is claimed to have a least five dimensions, professional identification, professional autonomy, professional commitment, membership of a professional community and self-regulation. Hence a measure based upon these five dimensions is included in this study. A sample of local civil servants (N=617) has been collected to test the aforementioned hypotheses and to replicate earlier research. By means of confirmatory factor analysis (Byrne 1988) – in particular for the newly developed measure of professionalism – and robust regression methods (Wooldridge 2010), the moderating hypotheses are tested. The findings should enable to develop a more contextually-based approach to the JDR-model, including the personal resources and/or demands such as PSM and professionalism.
