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Article Excerpt
Over the last ten years, the literature on accounting practice has evidenced a persistent number of articles that draw attention to the existence and consequence of work-related stress. Typified by those that say they thrive on it, stress, by itself, is not always a negative condition. Unlike stress, burnout is believed to have only dysfunctional consequences for the behavioral performance and psychological well-being of accounting professionals. For instance, it is reported that burnout symptoms occur in public accounting (Rose, 1983; Sanders, 1998), internal auditing (Kusel and Deyoub, 1983), and management accounting (Journal of Accountancy, 1984; Figler, 1980).
Despite the acknowledgment of burnout in the practitioner literature, the focus of academic research has largely continued to be on role stress. For the most part, the connection between stress, life enjoyment, career success, health and withdrawal from organizational participation has been articulated as the motivation to study role conflict and ambiguity in accounting organizations (Senatra, 1980; Collins and Killough, 1992; Haskins et al., 1990). These studies have produced a body of conflicting results. This could be because the source of negative results, job burnout, has not been theorized or measured by this work.
For many years, only two primarily descriptive unpublished papers studied accountant burnout on an explicit basis. These studies produced mixed evidence associating burnout with gender, family, and work concerns. Sweeney and Summers (2002) show that the burnout experienced in public accounting increases during the busy season. More generally, Fogarty et al. (2000) produced evidence that burnout should be considered as a mediating variable between role stress and traditional behavioral outcomes. Notwithstanding the recent increase in academic attention, there still remains a paucity of work on the topic for the accounting profession.
This article aims to fill the preceding gaps in the literature. It draws upon studies in fields such as occupational health and applied psychology to argue for a place for the burnout construct that is distinctive from other aspects of job/role stress. This leads to a set of hypotheses that places burnout as an endogenous condition in a model of behavioral and attitudinal consequences. A second section describes the empirical study in which data were collected from internal auditors. The next section provides evidence that both the psychological inclinations of individuals and their cognitive assessment of their skills affect their inclinations to burnout. The final section discusses the results, clarifies implications, and acknowledges limitations.
Literature Review and Hypothesis Development
Burnout describes a specific psychological condition in which people suffer emotional exhaustion, experience a lack of personal accomplishment, and tend to depersonalize others (Freudenberger, 1974). The occupational health and applied psychology literature has established a domain for the burnout construct, validated its measurement, and legitimated the study of its causes and consequences (Lee and Ashforth, 1996). The consensus in this literature is that burnout tendencies involve a psychological condition characterized by three interrelated symptoms (see Shirom, 1989). First, emotional exhaustion is evidenced by feelings of depleted energy and related sensations as a result of excessive psychoemotional demands. These excessive demands stem from work tasks that require innovative and creative solutions, and are most prominent in an environment of time pressure or related to matters of great consequence (Jackson et al., 1986). Second, reduced personal accomplishment entails attributions of inefficacy, low motivation and reduced self-esteem. Often these conditions are associated with the belief that future efforts will not be worthwhile because past efforts have repeatedly failed to produce desired results (Abramson et al., 1978). Depersonalization, the third dimension of burnout, is the tendency to dehumanize others, often through a cynical, callous, and uncaring attitude. Treating others as if they were objects occurs as a part of this burnout condition. Each burnout symptom is a distinct psychological condition with its own unique pattern of antecedent relationships with role stressors and consequential influences on job outcomes.
Direct Effects of Burnout Tendencies on Job Outcomes
A large body of literature outside the accounting domain has documented the consequences of burnout. In reviews and meta-analysis of this literature, Lee and Ashforth (1993, 1996) and Cordes and Dougherty (1993) conclude that burnout has often been associated with diminished levels of performance. Burnedout individuals stop taking the usual degree of care in their work and, as a result, lower quality is produced.
Job satisfaction is an important consequence of burnout (Maslach, 1982, 2001; Wolpin and Greenglass, 1991). Accountants caught in a burnout syndrome generally view the organization in adversarial terms and tend to psychologically withdraw from it. Emotionally exhausted professionals who view others in a detached and callous manner, and who do not feel their job provides them a meaningful sense of accomplishment, tend to withdraw from the organization (Maslach, 1982). Initially, this withdrawal may take the form of absenteeism, physical isolation, and extended breaks, as the employee avoids contact with organizational members and clients (Hellriegal and White, 1973; Gaertner et al., 1987). This contrasts dramatically with employees that have a high level of organizational commitment. Accountants that are burned-out exhibit lower affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Fogarty et al., 2000).
The general direction of this work establishes the dysfunctional consequences of burnout. Accountants have been shown to share the burnout problem with many other occupations that have a high level of contact with other people. Because the burnout problem exists, a search for its antecedents represents the next step towards a more complete appreciation of its role in a work environment, including potential steps to reduce it.
Antecedents of Burnout
The search for the sources of burnout tendencies recognizes that both psychological and behavioral attributes need to be involved. Burnout is located in the mental processes of individuals as they map onto the objectives of the organization. The meaningfulness of work must be considered both at the level where it is performed and within the organization in which it takes place.
Rotter (1966) developed and labeled a construct called locus of control. Simply put, there is a distinction between individuals...
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