Burnout is defined by Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter in The Truth About Burnout (1997) as a “gradual process of loss during which the mismatch between the needs of the person and the demands of the job grows ever greater” and is characterized by three dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffectiveness. The six sources of burnout are work overload, lack of control, insufficient reward, unfairness, breakdown of community, and value conflict (Maslach & Leiter, 1997). Maslach and Leiter (1997) go on to say the blame for burnout has traditionally been placed on the individual, when it is more likely a symptom of the organization’s ability to mitigate the six sources. Lastly, The Truth About Burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 1997) places burnout as the opposite of engagement.
The book does well at creating a framework of sources and dimensions of burnout, from which a manager, worker, or consultant can use simply to combat against burnout; however, there are many nuances neglected. Firstly, the authors pose burnout in the person-in-environment model, yet individual personality and cognitive differences are hardly discussed in the book. The authors expanded on individual traits in a later paper, stating that burnout was more likely for those “who have a less hardy personality, who have a more external locus of control, and who score as [emotionally unstable] on the Five-Factor Model of personality” (Maslach & Leiter, 2007). Multiple studies since have supported that those with more emotional intelligence fair better against burnout, including health professionals (Galdona, Urdaneta, Aldaz, & Etxeberria, 2012) and educators (Feroz & Parveen, 2012). There are several Dutch studies documenting cognitive performance in burnout patients over 1.5 (Oosterholt, Maes, Van der Linden, Verbraak, & Kompier, 2016) to 2 years (van Dam, Keijsers, Eling, & Becker, 2012) showing that cognitive function post-burnout does not return to control levels, with out without clinical intervention. However, resilience to burnout as a function of general intelligence does not yet appear to be studied.
Maslach and Leiter (1997) seem to generalize the corporate and industrial situation in which people experience burnout. They do little differentiate between labor-intensive jobs and desk jobs. One could question the validity of such a simplification; however, multiple studies support the notion that there is little variance in how blue-collar and white-collar workers experience burnout (Toppinen-Tanner, Kalimo, & Mutanen, 2002), the only noticeable difference may be levels of cynicism and depersonalization (Salanova, et al., 2005).
Lastly, Maslach and Leiter (1997) portray engagement and burnout as opposing ends of a spectrum. Their perspective appears to have remained static over the years (Maslach & Leiter, 2007) and is peer supported (Gonzalez-Roma, Schaufeli, Bakker, & Lloret, 2006). Conversely, more recent studies have argued that “apathetic” and “engaged-exhausted” groups defy this logic and that “engagement might not be the purely desirable form of motivation as which it is sometimes portrayed (Moeller, Ivcevic, White, Menges, & Brackett, 2018).
In short, The Truth About Burnout (1997) illustrates a useful framework, that has held up well overtime; yet, further research into the individual’s roll in burnout is likely necessary to make the theory more comprehensive.
References
Feroz, I., & Parveen, A. (2012, July 24). Emotional intelligence and burnout among high school teachers. International Journal of Psychology, 47(Sup 1), pp. 293-340.
Galdona, N., Urdaneta, E., Aldaz, E., & Etxeberria, I. (2012, November). EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND BURNOUT IN HEALTH PROFESSIONALS N. Galdona, E. Urdaneta,. Gerontologist, pp. 485-485.
Gonzalez-Roma, V., Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A. B., & Lloret, S. (2006). Burnout and work engagement: independent factors or opposite poles? Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68(1), 165-174.
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. (2007). Burnout. In Encyclopedia of Stress (pp. 358-362). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). The Truth About Burnout: How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to Do About It. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Moeller, J., Ivcevic, Z., White, A. E., Menges, J. I., & Brackett, M. A. (2018). Highly engaged but burned out: intra-individual profiles in the US workforce. Career Development International, 23(1), 86-105.
Oosterholt, B. G., Maes, J. H., Van der Linden, D., Verbraak, M. J., & Kompier, M. A. (2016). Getting better, but not well: A 1.5 year follow-up of cognitiveperformance and cortisol levels in clinical and non-Clinical burnout. Biological Psychology, 117, 89-99.
Salanova, M., Llorens, S., Garcia-Renedo, M., Burriel, R., Breso, E., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2005, October). TOWARDS A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL MODEL OF BURNOUT: A MULTIGROUP FACTOR-ANALYTIC STUDY INCLUDING DEPERSONALIZATION AND CYNICISM. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 65(5), 807-819.
Toppinen-Tanner, S., Kalimo, R., & Mutanen, P. (2002). The process of burnout in white-collar and blue-collar jobs: eight-year prospective study of exhaustion. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 555-570.
van Dam, A., Keijsers, G. P., Eling, P. A., & Becker, E. S. (2012, October-December). Impaired cognitive performance and responsiveness to reward in burnout patients: Two years later. Work & Stress, 26(4), 333-346.