Purpose
This study investigates the role of coworker and supervisor support on three aspects of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, perceived lack of personal accomplishment) and job satisfaction. The authors argue that different sources of social support at work can influence these three aspects of burnout differently.
Design/methodology/approach
Questionnaires were delivered to supervisors of each campus department at two state universities in South Texas asking them to encourage their employees to complete the survey. The sample consisted of 174 personnel.
Findings
The results show that coworker support was negatively associated with emotional exhaustion and depersonalization but not with perceived lack of personal accomplishment while supervisor support was negatively associated with all aspects of burnout. The analysis also confirmed the direct and indirect effects of coworker and supervisor support on job satisfaction.
Practical implications
Due to the detrimental consequences of burnout to employee satisfaction, organizations need to make sure that employees receive sufficient support from their coworkers and supervisors to avoid this burnout problem.
Originality/value
Even though the role of social support on job burnout has been previously investigated, existing studies tended to combine three dimensions of burnout into a single measure. Using an aggregated measure of burnout as an outcome variable can limit our understanding about the role that social support plays on each individual dimension of burnout. By employing burnout as a multidimensional construct, the present study can determine whether coworker support and supervisor support can have a different impact on each of the three dimensions of burnout.
Despite the severity of the COVID-19 crisis, which has affected organizations worldwide, there is a lack of research on the organizational factors that affect the psychological wellbeing of the employees of an organization affected by the crisis. This research uses the case of employees at two international universities in Thailand that have been directly affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Grounded in social support theory and the job-demand resource model of job stress, this research examines the role of supervisor support in explaining the degree of perceived uncertainties and emotional exhaustion that employees experience due to the COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, this research examines whether the effect of supervisor support on the perceived uncertainties of employees can be moderated by organizational intransigence, that is, a prevailing climate of resistance to change at the workplace. The questionnaire survey data were obtained from a sample of 300 employees at two private international universities, and the partial least squares structural equation model was used for data analysis. The results significantly confirm that supervisor support has a negative effect on the perceived uncertainties of employees. Perceived uncertainties also significantly mediate the negative effect of supervisor support on the employees' emotional exhaustion. More importantly, the moderating effect analysis shows that the negative effect of supervisor support on the perceived uncertainties of employees presents only for employees who work in a workplace climate where there is low intransigence; in a workplace climate where there is high intransigence, supervisor support does not lower the perceived uncertainties of employees.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.