Why Employees Experience Burnout: An Explanation of Illegitimate Tasks

Abstract

Among the many workplace stressors, a new type of stressor has been identified: illegitimate tasks. This newly identified type of stressor refers to work tasks that do not meet employee role expectations and constitute a violation of professional identity. To investigate illegitimate tasks’ mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions on job burnout, we examined a cross-level first-stage moderated mediation model with the collective climate as a moderator and psychological entitlement as a mediator. Grounded in the job demands–resources model (JD-R) and justice theory, the current study uniquely posits that illegitimate tasks can lead to burnout by way of psychological entitlement; however, this effect is less where collective climate is higher. Data were collected from 459 employees on 89 teams at enterprises in China. The results of the analysis, using HLM, MPLUS and SPSS revealed that illegitimate tasks stimulated employees’ psychological entitlement and led to job burnout. While employees’ psychological entitlement played a partially mediating role between illegitimate tasks and job burnout, a collective climate could weaken the stimulating effect of illegitimate tasks on employees’ psychological entitlement and then negatively affect the mediating effect of psychological entitlement between illegitimate tasks and burnout. The study reveals the antecedents of burnout from the perspective of job tasks and psychological entitlement, offers practical insight into the mechanism of illegitimate tasks on employee job burnout and recommends that organizations develop a collective climate to reduce employees’ psychological entitlement and job burnout for steady development of the enterprise.

The impact of illegitimate tasks on burnout syndrome in a healthcare system: A cross-sectional study

“…Second, the length of service/age ratio was a statistically significant predictor of burnout for all the subscales, indicating lower levels of burnout with a longer time invested in the organization. This effect has been observed in other studies, where increasing age reduces burnout levels ( Fila and Eatough, 2020 ; Ouyang et al, 2022 ; Werdecker and Esch, 2021 ). Third, although the type of organization was not a statistically significant predictor, the trend indicated that professionals working in public organizations were more likely to develop burnout.…”

“…Correlation analysis showed similar patterns as reported in the literature. Illegitimate tasks were highly correlated to burnout subscales with higher correlation strength for the work-related burnout subscale, as described by other authors ( Kilponen et al, 2021 ; Ouyang et al, 2022 ; Werdecker and Esch, 2021 ). Finally, a univariate regression analysis in Fig.…”

“…Additionally, a negative correlation between age and burnout levels is a phenomenon that has already been reported by many authors ( Edú-Valsania et al, 2022 ; Listopad et al, 2021 ; Ouyang et al, 2022 ). On the other hand, some authors have found a positive relationship between these two variables, even though the correlation was not statistically significant ( Edú-Valsania et al, 2022 ; Kilponen et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Several studies have determined a positive association between burnout levels and illegitimate tasks levels ( Kilponen et al, 2021 ; Ouyang et al, 2022 ; Werdecker and Esch, 2021 ). However, there are different work environments in every country, which limits the generalizability of the results proposed by the researchers.…”

Do illegitimate tasks matter for registered nurses’ work motivation? A cross-sectional study based on a nationally representative sample of Swedish nurses

“…The concept illegitimate tasks has been studied in various settings and in relation to a variety of outcomes ( Ding and Kuvaas, 2022 ; Semmer,2019 ). For instance, it has been found to be associated with negative health and emotional effects, such as lower self-esteem ( Sonnentag and Lischetzke, 2018 ), poorer sleep ( Semmer et al., 2015 ), increased cortisol release ( Kottwitz et al., 2013 ), increased anger and frustration ( Eatough et al., 2016 ), higher incidence of musculoskeletal pain ( Kottwitz et al., 2021 ) and higher risk of burnout (e.g., Ouyang et al., 2022 ; Semmer et al., 2019 ). There is also research that focuses specifically on dimensions related to motivation, though not including RNs.…”