The Effects of Asymmetrical Guanxi Perception on Job Burnout: Task Conflict, Relationship Conflict, and Process Conflict as Mediators

Abstract

In Chinese organizations, individuals benefit in many ways from having good guanxi. For employees, however, guanxi also comes with well-documented negative effects. Until recently, the guanxi investigated in these studies was always of a substantial nature. The negative effects of non-substantial guanxi (in effect, the absence of real guanxi), such as the guanxi of misunderstandings for those who lack good guanxi, have not been examined. This study investigates how the existence of asymmetrical guanxi perception for an employee (i.e., when other people believe that good guanxi exists between a manager and an employee, but the employee disagrees with the belief that he/she has good guanxi with his/her supervisors) contributes to job burnout for that employee due to task conflict, relationship conflict, and process conflict. A cross-sectional data sample was collected from 363 employees of 10 hotels in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling results suggest that relationship conflict is the most powerful mediator affecting the relationship between asymmetrical guanxi perception and job burnout. The results provide insights for researchers interested in the mechanism of how asymmetrical guanxi perception induces employee job burnout while generating useful implications for managers charged with reducing such burnout.

IsGuanxicritical to the job burnout of ITP and IS/IT users in Chinese society?

“…The role conflict has a significantly positive effect on work exhaustion (H3c) of Chinese ITP and IS/IT. The findings are consistent with the studies of Benlian (2020), Elrehail et al (2021), Hung (2021), Lee et al (2016), Maslach et al (1996Maslach et al ( , 2001, Mion et al (2021) and Venkatesh et al (2020), in that role conflict will be an antecedent variable to IT related employees' work exhaustion.…”

“…The fairness of rewards has a significantly negative effect on work exhaustion (H3e) of Chinese ITP and IS/IT users. The findings are consistent with the studies of Hung (2021), Li et al (2015), Maslach and Leiter (2008), Venkatesh et al (2020) and Zhang et al (2015). Because Chinese ITP and IS/IT users will appraise that if their organization has unfair rewards situation, their work exhaustion of course will be increased (De Clercq et al, 2019;Fern andez-Castro et al, 2017); in contrast, if their organization provide fairness of rewards, their work exhaustion will be decreased, because it is beneficial for them in their appraisal process.…”

“…Role conflict will be a prime work demands because many work problems are employees' heightened concerns when dealing with role conflicts that arise from IT use, requires sustained efforts (Benlian, 2020). Thus, role conflict will be a predicted variable to employees' work exhaustion (Elrehail et al, 2021;Mion et al, 2021), and many burnout studies have found that there is a strong relationship between role conflict and the exhaustion dimension of burnout (Benlian, 2020;Elrehail et al, 2021;Hung, 2021;Lee et al, 2016;Maslach et al, 1996Maslach et al, , 2001Mion et al, 2021;Venkatesh et al, 2020). Thus, it is posited: H3c.…”

“…The experience of unfair treatment is emotionally frustrating and exhausting and unfairness fosters a deep sense of cynicism about the workplace (Li et al, 2015;Maslach and Leiter, 2008;Venkatesh et al, 2020). When employees mistakenly accept the attitude of their peers' unfair evaluation of the input and output of all parties, the effort and return (including work effort and work return) are unbalanced, thus it is contrary to the fair and reasonable process of effort and rewards in social interaction (Hung, 2021).…”

“…Therefore, an imbalance between high work effort and low reward can lead to a stress response (Hung, 2021), and the unfair rewards based on position unbalance, unfairness regarding the human resources (HR) system (Zhang et al, 2015) also will increase employees' work exhaustion (Li et al, 2015). Congruent scores on workload, reward and fairness would be negatively correlated with exhaustion (Maslach and Leiter, 2008).…”