BASIC CONCEPTUALIZATION AND MEASUREMENT

BASIC CONCEPTUALIZATION AND MEASUREMENT

Burnout is viewedas an affective reaction to prolongedexposure to stress at work; that is, to situations in which job demands exceed individuals’ adaptive resources. We contendthat the core content of this affective reaction is the feelings of emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, andcognitive weariness that result from the gradual depletion over time of individuals’ intrinsic energetic resources that occurs at work (Schaufeli & Buunk, 2003, p. 388; Shirom, 1989, 2003b). This conceptualization of burnout, basedon the Conservation Of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll & Shirom, 1993, 2000), relates to energetic resources only, andcovers physical, emotional, and cognitive energies. The three facets of burnout—namely, physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, andcognitive weariness—are expectedto be closely interrelatedfactors (Hobfoll & Shirom, 2000). Physical fatigue refers to feelings of tiredness and low levels of energy in carrying out daily tasks at work, like getting up in the morning to go to work. Emotional exhaustion refers to feeling too weak to display empathy to clients and co-workers and lacking the energy needed to invest in relationships with other people at work. Cognitive weariness refers to feelings of slow thinking andreduced thinking agility. Each component of burnout covers the draining and deple- tion of energetic resources in a particular domain. The Shirom–Melamed Burnout Measure (SMBM) was constructedto assess burnout following this conceptual approach (for more details on aspects of its construct validity see Shirom, 2003b).

Burnout may be assessedby several other measures, reflecting the varying conceptualizations that coexist in this fieldof study. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), in its different versions (the current version is MBI-GS; see Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001), is the most widely used instrument to assess burnout, andhas been usedin several past empirical studies of the relationships between burnout andmental health outcomes (Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli & Buunk, 2003). According to the conceptual approach underlying the current version of this instrument (MBI-GS), burnout is viewedas a synd rome whose components are physical andemotional exhaustion, cynical attitudes toward work or depersonalization, and reduced professional efficacy which encompasses social andnonsocial aspects of occupational accomplishment (Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli & Buunk, 2003). The MBI (including the recent version of MBI-GS) and the SMBM share the component of physical andemotional exhaustion. The

271 three-factor structure underlying the MBI has been confirmed in many

B URNOUT AND H EALTH R EVIEW

studies (for a review see Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998, pp. 50–54). It has been arguedthat the psychometric confirmation of the three-factor structure of the MBI (or the MBI-GS) may reflect the fact that these factors were empirically derived from an arbitrary set of items and were not based on a priori theory (Schaufeli & Buunk, 2003) or the possibility that each of the three dimensions reside in a different conceptual domain (Shirom, 2003b). Recently, an alternative burnout measure was developed and validated by

a group of Dutch researchers (Van Horn, Taris, Schaufeli, & Schreurs, in press), which includes an emotional and physical exhaustion scale taken from the MBI-GS anda cognitive exhaustion scale. This new measure may indicate a convergence toward the conceptualization of burnout as a process involving the depletion of physical, emotional, and cognitive resources.

The literature on burnout has several salient characteristics. First, it is a work-relatedconstruct that is concernedprimarily with employedpersons, excluding the unemployed and those not gainfully employed due to illness or chronic disease. Second, most of the empirical studies on the health conse- quences of burnout are based on a cross-sectional study design and measure burnout, andalso mental health, by asking respondents to complete a self- report questionnaire. In this review, in the very few instances where this was possible, we gave preference to longitudinal studies on the impact of burnout on health since they provide more credence to cause-and-effect statements in that they are able to test reversedcausation (Zapf, Dormann, & Frese, 1996). This review covers burnout of employees in work organizations, excluding research that deals exclusively with nonemployment settings (e.g., athletes’ burnout: Dale & Weinberg, 1990). In the same vein, we do not cover research that deals with burnout in life domains other than work, like the crossover of burnout among marital partners (e.g., Pines, 1996; Westman & Etzioni, 1995). In several advanced market economies, like the USA, the Netherlands andthe UK, the incidence of stress-relatedworkers’ compensation claims has risen sharply in recent years (cf. Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998). In Japan, work-relatedexcess fatigue is consid eredone of the major occupational health problems (Kawakami & Haratani, 1999). Therefore, burnout at work can be regarded as a major public health problem and a cause for concern among policy-makers.