Crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion within teams: a longitudinal multilevel study

Abstract

This study investigated the crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion among team members and the moderating effect of cohesiveness and social support on this process. Participants were 310 employees of an employment agency in the Netherlands, working in one of 100 teams. Multilevel analysis using a longitudinal design did not reveal a main effect of crossover. However, consistent with the study's hypotheses, the results showed a moderating effect of team cohesiveness and social support. We detected crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion across time from the group to individual team members only in teams characterized by high levels of cohesiveness and social support. Teams characterized by low levels of cohesiveness and social support showed no crossover of job demands and exhaustion. The findings demonstrate that team-level moderators play an important role in crossover processes. Moreover, social support and cohesiveness may not always be positive.

Crossover of Exhaustion between Dentists and Dental Nurses

“…In a study by Totterdell et al (1998), the link between team-level mood and individual mood (positive and negative) was strongest for those nurses who perceived the team climate as positive. In a similar vein, Westman et al (2011) found in their study that exhaustion crossed over from teams to individual employees only when teams had high levels of cohesiveness or collegial social support. However, to our knowledge, no studies have examined the crossover of exhaustion (burnout) among working dyads in health care or considered how frequent and positive interpersonal relationships may affect the crossover effect.…”

“…This is because positive interrelationships make the receiver more open-minded and receptive to the sender's feelings, which in turn may lead to either a conscious or unconscious empathic reaction in the receiver, thus enabling the crossover (Barsade, 2002). Therefore, when a dental nurse, for example, feels that his or her exhausted partner, a dentist, is acting kindly towards him or her and showing positive gestures, this friendliness may create openness and empathy in the nurse and hence enable the crossover of exhaustion from the dentist to the dental nurse in regular and intensive collaboration (see also Westman et al, 2011). Thus, we hypothesize that both frequent and positive collaboration is needed for the crossover of exhaustion.…”

“…In the present study, we aim towards a better understanding of the role of positive interpersonal relationships in the crossover of exhaustion in dentist-dental nurse working dyads. On the basis of the results of studies conducted in teams (Totterdell, Kellet, Teuchmann, & Briner, 1998;Westman et al, 2011), we argue that positive and frequent interpersonal relationships may function as a 'double-edged sword'; although the characteristics of good relationships such as mutual feedback protect workers from exhaustion, on a dyad level, positive interactions may also actually enable the crossover of exhaustion, when the level of exhaustion is high and interaction is frequent. Because of hierarchical relationships, we also expect that exhaustion is more likely to cross over from dentists to dental nurses than vice versa.…”

Testing the Causal Links Between School Climate, School Violence, and School Academic Performance

“…Such mechanisms operate as a school-level "emergent" phenomenon (i.e., a phenomenon that "originates in the cognition, affect, behaviors, or other characteristics of individuals, is amplified by their interactions, and manifests as a higher-level, collective phenomenon"; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000) rather than as a student-level mechanism. Organizational theory provides numerous examples of how organizational climate, measured at an individual level and aggregated to a higher level as a property of the whole organization, impacts individual members' performance (e.g., Westman, Bakker, Roziner, & Sonnentag, 2011).…”

Effects of perceived job social support on emotions experienced by nurses: the role of difficulties with patient care

“…In recent years interpersonal processes like emotional contagion or crossover of burnout at work have been gaining more and more interest. They include inter-individual transmission of feelings and attitudes from one employee to another and, consequently, the convergence of emotion [34] .…”