Int. J. Society Systems Science, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2009
Development and validation of job burnout scale in the Indian context Shilpa Surana* Institute of Management, Nirma University of Science and Technology, Ahmedabad, 382481, India Email:
[email protected] *Corresponding author
Anup K. Singh International Management Institute, B-10, Qutab Institutional Area, New Delhi, 110016, India E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract: Ever since the term ‘burnout’ was coined to describe a state of chronic emotional fatigue, this phenomenon has become the focus of much research interest. Employee burnout is a topic of major interest for management researchers because it has consequential implications for both individuals and organisations. The objective of the paper is to develop a standardised scale to measure job burnout in the Indian context. India has stood as the most dominant outsourcing destination in the world and call centres form the most important segment of the outsourcing industry. Thus, the scale is validated with a sample of 303 customer service representatives from call centres in India. Moreover, validating the scale with a sample drawn from the cross-cultural diversity of India enables cross-cultural validity of the scale. The factor analysis of the scale yielded three factors, namely meaninglessness, exhaustion and demotivation. The scale demonstrates sound nomological and discriminant validity and its reliability estimates are also high. The paper argues that the present scale can be used in cross-cultural studies of burnout as a reliable measure of burnout. Keywords: business process outsourcing; call centres; discriminant validity; factor analysis; Indian context; job burnout; nomological validity. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Surana, S. and Singh, A.K. (2009) ‘Development and validation of job burnout scale in the Indian context’, Int. J. Society Systems Science, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp.351–374. Biographical notes: Shilpa Surana received her PhD in Organisational Behaviour area from Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India. Prior to that, she received her Masters in Management Studies with specialisation in HR and Bachelor’s in Psychology, both from Mumbai University, India. She had a short stint as Lecturer at Birla Institute of Management Technology, Greater Noida, India. Her research interests include job burnout, workplace spirituality and leadership. She has a number of publications to her credit in international and national journals and conferences. She has also obtained ‘Diplome Initial De Langue Française’ (DILF) from the French Ministry of National Education in 2008.
Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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S. Surana and A.K. Singh Anup K. Singh is Professor at the International Management Institute, New Delhi, India. Before joining the institute, he was the Director of Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad. He received his PhD from the University of Allahabad, Allahabad and Post Doctoral Fellowship from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has six books to his credit and has published more than 60 articles in reputed journals. He is an accomplished Teacher, Trainer and Consultant. His research interests include leadership, institution building and organisational change.
1
Introduction
The search for meaning in life is an eternal quest. As rightly stated by Frankl (1976) ‘the primary striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man’. According to the existential perspective, one’s work or vocation provides an important outlet to derive meaning and satisfaction in one’s life. Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of human needs’ theory of motivation also illustrates how higher-order needs such as esteem and self-actualisation are basically met through one’s vocation in life. It is no wonder then that work and work-related issues have consumed so much of debate and deliberation in human history. When seen from the perspective of research, substantial work has been devoted to examining and finding solutions to work-related problems and employee-related issues. Job burnout becomes significant as a concept related to understanding employees’ negative work experiences. Burnout, a malaise of the spirit and soul afflicts a vast majority of the workforce today in all occupations. In burnout, the motivation to work is lost, work is perceived as drudgery and jobs are painfully empty. Employees are plagued by frustration, alienation, fatigue, lack of energy, cynicism and even despair. In fact it is a condition where people prefer to be sick rather than to go to work. Burnout affects an organisation’s most motivated and productive workforce and is thus an irreplaceable loss of human capital to an organisation. It is surprising to note that despite the passage of time and the resources that occupational health psychologists have devoted to its study, burnout still provokes much debate. Even after three decades of research in this area, the field is still grappling with basic issues like ‘what is burnout’, ‘what are its constituents’ and ‘how best to measure it’. Specifically, its measurement has been a controversial issue (Schaufeli and Van Dierendonck, 1993). Although the Maslach burnout inventory (MBI) has been the most widely used instrument to measure job burnout, it has been questioned on theoretical, content and methodological grounds (Shirom, 1989; Demerouti et al., 2001; Schaufeli, 2003). Specifically, the cross-cultural applicability of the MBI is questionable (Kristensen et al., 2005). Therefore, the authors were motivated to develop a scale to measure job burnout that addresses the issue of cross-cultural validity. Our study was conducted in the Indian context. India is an example of a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural society. Researchers have clustered nations on the basis of identified cultural dimensions and placed India in Anglo, Latin American, Far Eastern, South Asian groups and even deemed it as an unclassifiable culture. Thus, the cultural diversity in India is well established.
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While the MBI was validated with a sample of traditional human service roles like social service and mental health workers, physicians, nurses and police officers, we chose to test and validate our scale with a new form of service workers that have become a dominant workforce today: customer service representatives (CSRs) in call centres. Call centres form the most important segment of the outsourcing industry and India, with 44% of the global offshore outsourcing market for software and back-office services, has stood as the most dominant outsourcing destination in the world. However, working in call centres puts specific demands upon employees, which makes working in a call centre different from other jobs. Bain and Taylor (1999) captured the essential characteristics of this work when they observed: ‘For many employed in the sector, the daily experience is patently of repetitive, intensive and frequently stressful work, based upon Taylorist principles, which can result in employee ‘burnout’. Data were collected from 303 CSRs and the scale was subjected to factor analysis. Factor analysis yielded three factors, namely meaninglessness (ML), exhaustion (EX) and demotivation (DM). The scale demonstrates sound nomological and discriminant validity and its reliability estimates are also high. The paper discusses the scale with respect to its cross-cultural validity. Finally, the paper concludes by stating that the statistical analyses of the present scale are very encouraging so as to deem it suitable for measuring job burnout particularly in cross-cultural burnout research.
2
Business process outsourcing (BPO)
‘Outsourcing’ is contracting with outside consultants, software houses or service bureaus to perform IT operations. ‘Business process outsourcing’ (BPO) refers to outsourcing arrangements when entire business functions (such as IT, call centres, payroll, human resources and customer service) are outsourced. Today, corporations are turning to outsourcing for a wide range of functions from logistics to human resources to customer relations. The reasons include cost, quality, performance, supplier pressure, access to special technical and application skills and other factors (Applegate et al., 2003). The global BPO industry (also known as ITES-IT enabled services) was valued at around US$773 billion during the year 2002 and according to estimates by the International Data Corporation worldwide, it is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9% in the future. At present, India, with 44% of the global offshore outsourcing market for software and back-office services, has stood as the most dominant outsourcing destination in the world. India’s large English-speaking, highly educated and low-wage talent pool has established itself as one of the fastest-growing outsourcing services markets in the world. A 12-hour time zone difference with the USA and other markets for medical transcription or call centre services is also in India’s favour. Despite its recent arrival on the Indian scene, the industry has grown phenomenally, and has now become a very important part of the export-oriented IT software and services environment. The Indian ITES industry recorded a growth rate in excess of 50% in the year 2002–2003. National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) lists the major indicators of the high growth potential of the BPO/ITES industry in India as the following:
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During the years 2003–2004, the ITES/BPO segment achieved a 54% growth in revenues as compared to the previous years.
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ITES exports accounted for US$3.6 billion in revenues, up from US$2.5 billion during the years 2002–2003.
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The ITES-BPO segment also proved to be a major opportunity for job seekers, creating employment for around 74,400 additional personnel in India during the years 2003–2004.
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The number of Indians working for the ITES sector jumped to 245,500 in the year 2004.
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In the future, the BPO segment is expected to employ over 1.1 million Indians, according to studies conducted by NASSCOM and leading business Intelligence Company, McKinsey and Co. Market research shows that in terms of job creation, the ITES-BPO industry is growing at over 50%.
As many as 400 of the Fortune 500 companies either have their own centres in India or are currently outsourcing work to Indian outsourcing firms. Outsourcing has not only improved living conditions for millions in India but has also helped job-exporting countries in wealth creation. The Indian outsourcing industry is estimated to have been responsible for as much as 60% of cost savings every year for companies outsourcing back-office work to India. The consulting firm McKinsey and Co. estimated that the cost of developing a new drug in the US pharmaceutical sector would be reduced by as much as $200 million, from the currently estimated figure at between $600 million and $900 million, if the work is outsourced to India.
2.1 Social and cultural effects of call centres The tremendous growth of Indian call centres in the last few years has generated considerable social and cultural developments in Indian society. Both positive and negative impacts of outsourcing are discernable in the social and cultural life of call centre workers in India.
2.2 Gender and family In India’s patriarchal society, the emergence of call centres is nothing less than a social reform movement as far as economic, social and cultural empowerment of women is concerned. Call centres often prefer hiring women as they are seen to be more hardworking, patient, attentive, loyal, less aggressive and have better interpersonal and analytical skills than men. Thus, a booming call centre industry has provided employment to thousands of young women in urban locations, earning salaries that are very good by Indian standards. Women employed in call centres are no longer bound by the traditional patterns of family control over daughters. Financial independence provided by employment in call centres along with a gender-neutral and international working atmosphere has the potential to further female empowerment. Although call centres have quickly changed women’s status in the family, they are slow in improving their social status (Singh and Pandey, 2005). Employment in call
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centres for women is still considered to be less dignified work due to odd working hours such as night shifts and is also sexually stigmatised.
2.3 Culture Outsourcing based on call centres is pivotal in bridging the cultural gap between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’. As Indian call centres serve mainly customers from western countries, their employees are provided with opportunities and training in understanding the culture, accent and customs existing in the outsourcing receiving countries. In this way, call centres have been crucial in providing millions of Indian youth working in call centres more exposure to the western culture. This gives them a different perspective about western way of life. Secondly, Indian call centres are emerging as an attractive destination for jobs opportunities for foreign language professionals, thus providing a conduit for east-west exchange.
2.4 Multiple personality disorder and other psychiatric problems Call centres have a profound impact on the cultural and social behavioural patterns of young Indian people and their families. Many call centre workers are reconstructed in terms of western culture, accent, language and identity during their 10–12 hours long work in the odd work shift. At the individual level, this creates a problem called multiple personality disorder. The same person is divided between Sulochana and Sally, Krishnamurthy and Chris, Sahana and San, Hari and Harry, etc. (Pradhan and Abraham, 2005). A rising number of Indian call centre and software workers are complaining of stress, panic attacks, depression, relationship troubles, alcoholism and eating disorders. Call centre workers have no social life; many of them show symptoms of bipolar disorder with going to work each day as the ‘high’, whereas when they are at home, they are listless, bad-tempered and depressed’. Even while stress and burnout are severely debilitating the workers in the sector, they are forced to live with it.
2.5 Racial and cultural abuse Due to the employment losses, outsourcing has generated a lot of resentment in the countries receiving outsourcing. Call centre workers in India are increasingly becoming victim to hate calls by overseas customers that include rudeness, racial and cultural abuse and sexual harassment. Some callers see this as an opportunity to air out their venom against terrorist attacks in their countries. But most often, the abusive calls had pure racist overtones. They are being labelled as ‘terrorists’, ‘racially inferior’, etc., ultimately deeply affecting them psychologically and culturally. These stress factors generated by clients’ rude and abusive behaviour are triggering call centre employees to quit their jobs and is affecting their normal social behaviours.
2.6 Social Divisions Perhaps the most important negative impact that call centres have generated is the wide-ranging social division within family and outside. The new working habits and patterns of lifestyles, like working at night, smoking, drinking and pub culture, are in
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complete contrast to the value systems, traditions and beliefs still nurtured by the urban middle-class. These young people have little time to spare for their family members, relatives or friends due to long working hours. These issues are creating family and social tensions in the urban area. Alarmingly, the well-paying job in the call centre is widening the social and economic divisions between a booming middle class and an impoverished class of urban poor.
2.7 Sustainability of call centres and potential social effects The international competition for outsourcing will be intense in the long run, with countries like the Philippines, China and Malaysia competing with India. As soon as India starts losing its competitive advantage in call centre work due to competing countries overcoming the language barriers, it will affect millions of young people who have taken up call centre work as their careers. Most of these call centre employees, who have given up other career options at a young age to earn hefty salaries, will be the first to be thrown out of employment. Working in call centres for five years or so, just answering or making a phone call, makes these young people unskilled for employment in any other sector. In such a scenario, the social benefits of short-run employment opportunities made available by call centres are likely to have a very high social cost in the long-run, creating high unemployment in certain sectors and other related social problems.
3
Literature review
3.1 Job burnout Since Freudenberger (1974) coined the term ‘burnout’ to describe a state of chronic emotional fatigue, this phenomenon has become the focus of much research interest. Conceptualised within the framework of stress, the subject of burnout has become a frequent topic of theory, research and intervention. Persons suffering from burnout exhibit feelings of low energy, lack of motivation, negative feelings about themselves or their work and withdrawal from interpersonal interactions (Maslach and Jackson, 1984; Maslach and Schaufeli, 1993). Burnout ‘entraps employees in a negative, vicious spiral in which they do not seek help and are not prone to strive for change in their situation and, as a result, they continue to perform ineffectively’ (Bakker et al., 2004). The person who reaches the burnout stage is saying in one way or another, ‘I’ve had it. I can’t take it anymore’. The original work on burnout as an academic subject was carried out by Freudenberger (1974) and Maslach (1976), basing their work on the human services. The majority of subsequent work in the burnout field has also looked at ‘people professions’, or the ‘human services’ (Maslach, 1982) or been derived from work within this context. Within this framework, burnout is assumed to be particularly relevant to those whose work focuses on caring for people in emotionally charged situations. Employee burnout is a topic of major interest for management researchers because it has consequential implications for both individuals and organisations (e.g., Lee and Ashforth, 1993, 1996). At an individual level, burnout has been associated with the experience of psychological distress, anxiety, depression, reduced self-esteem and
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substance abuse (Maslach et al., 2001). Some studies also suggest a link between burnout and coronary heart disease (Tennant, 1996). This suggests that burnout should be regarded as an occupational health issue. Research also shows burnout to have negative impact on organisational effectiveness (Wright and Bonett, 1997). For example, burnout is associated with absenteeism, turnover, reduced productivity or effectiveness and lower levels of satisfaction and organisational commitment (Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli and Enzmann, 1998). Furthermore, some research suggests that burnout is contagious, spreading to affect the colleagues of those who experience it and even resulting in a negative spill over into home life (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). In addition to this, a greater understanding of psychological burnout may be important because of the high incidence of burnout experienced in organisations (Golembiewski and Munzenrider, 1988), the presence of burnout in countries around the world (Burke and Richardsen, 1993; Golembiewski et al., 1990), the stability of burnout over time (Burke and Greenglass, 1991; Golembiewski et al., 1986) and the relative absence-but success-of organisational-level interventions to ameliorate burnout in organisations (Golembiewski et al., 1987).
3.2 The MBI Soon after its introduction in the early 1980s (Maslach and Jackson, 1981), the MBI became the almost universally accepted ‘gold standard’ to assess burnout. Over 90% of all empirical burnout studies in the world have been performed with the MBI or some adaptation of it (Schaufeli and Enzmann, 1998). Accordingly, the definition of burnout provided by the test authors was accepted by implication. This popular psychological phenomenon was defined by the test authors as ‘….a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who do ‘people-work’ of some kind’ (Maslach and Jackson, 1986). However, the MBI has been questioned on theoretical, content and methodological grounds (Shirom, 1989; Demerouti et al., 2001; Schaufeli, 2003). For relevance to our paper is the questionable cross-cultural validity of the MBI (Kristensen et al., 2005). These authors administered the MBI in a European culture and found that a number of statements provoked negative reactions from the respondents. In particular, the questions on depersonalisation (such as ‘I feel I treat some recipients as if they were impersonal objects’ and ‘I don’t really care what happens to some recipients’) caused very negative reactions sometimes, even anger from the respondents. Also some of the personal accomplishment items were questioned. A number of these were found to be ‘very American’ (‘I feel I’m positively influencing other people’s lives through my work’ and ‘I have accomplished many worthwhile things in this job’). According to the researchers, the translation of questionnaires from one culture (usually the USA) to another is a complicated issue. Very often the main emphasis is put on technical problems and precise back translations while the issues of cultural, gender and socio-economic differences tend to be ignored.
3.3 India: a case of unity in diversity Cross-cultural comparative studies mostly have been based on the assumption of cultural homogeneity that equates culture with nation (Panda and Gupta, 2004). Such a conceptualisation is a convenient simplification of the complex reality, which could be a
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result of what Child (1981) calls ‘intellectual laziness’. As Thomas (2002) argues, ‘there could be multiple cultures within national borders and same cultural group could span many nations’. India is an example of a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural society. Panda and Gupta (2004) did a meta-analysis of four empirical studies focussing on cultural diversity within India and found location-specific cultural preferences in India as a consequence of different degrees of infrastructural development in those locations. Researchers have clustered nations on the basis of identified cultural dimensions and placed India in Anglo, Latin American, Far Eastern, South Asian groups and even deemed it as an unclassifiable culture. Haire et al. (1966) place India along with Argentina and Chile in a Latin American cluster. Sirota and Greenwood (1971) and Ronen and Kraut (1977) put India in the Anglo cluster along with other English speaking nations. Hofstede (1976) could not find any other nation with cultural profiles similar to India and hence put India as an independent nation. However, Hofstede (1980) in his later study put India in the Far East cluster with countries like Hong Kong, Singapore and so on. Ronen and Shenkar (1985) reviewed 14 international comparative studies and on the basis of their subjective analysis put India as an independent nation, with a cultural profile not similar to any other identified cluster. Schwartz (1999) on the basis of his value survey across 49 countries placed India in the Far East cluster along with China, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Hong Kong and so on. The Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) study, a research programme focussing on culture and leadership of 61 nations, puts India in the South Asian cluster along with Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand (Gupta et al., 2002). This brief overview of India’s place in various country clusters reveals that Indian cultural profile is too complex to be marked off under one category.
3.4 The present job burnout scale In view of this consideration, we were motivated to develop a scale to measure job burnout that draws from the cultural diversity in India and is thus cross-culturally valid. The two cities from which we derived our sample are representative of the diversity in India as people from across the country have migrated there in search of better job opportunities and a better life style. The present scale conceptualises burnout as a multidimensional phenomenon (similar to the MBI). Three dimensions resulted from the factor analysis and were labelled as meaninglessness (ML), exhaustion (EX) and demotivation (DM). Accordingly, burnout is defined as ‘a state of meaninglessness, exhaustion and demotivation brought on by prolonged negative experiences at the workplace’. Meaninglessness is a state of boredom, emptiness, frustration; exhaustion is a state of being drained to the extent of feeling like an object and demotivation is a state of lack of psychological energy and enthusiasm.
3.5 Comparison between the present job burnout scale and the MBI The MBI was developed in the US context in 1981. The present scale is developed in the Indian context with a cross-cultural sample. The MBI was validated with traditional human services roles like policemen, social service and mental health workers, physicians, nurses etc. These occupations have a high potential for burnout (Maslach, 1976). The present burnout scale is validated with a
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newer form of service workers i.e., CSRs in call centres. CSR is a ‘high burnout’ job as they typically have frequent and intense interactions with multiple others (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). The MBI as well as our job burnout scale conceptualise burnout as a three-dimensional phenomena. However, there is a difference in the wording of the dimensions. While the MBI consists of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment; our scale consists of ML, EX and DM.
3.6 Validity of the scale The validity of the scale was estimated in terms of nomological and discriminant validity. ‘Nomological validity’ refers to the degree that the summated scale makes accurate predictions of other concepts in a theoretically based model (Hair et al., 1998). In this case, the researcher identifies theoretically supported relationships from prior research or accepted principles and then assesses whether the scale has corresponding relationships. Thus, in our case, we would determine if the present burnout measure demonstrates predicted relationships of job burnout with other variables as has been shown to exist based on theory and/or prior research. The variables that we chose for the purpose of demonstrating nomological validity are: 1
role conflict
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work overload
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emotional labour (emotional labour-variety and emotional labour-surface acting)
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social support (social support-co-worker, social support-supervisor and social support-peer)
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positive and negative affectivity
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organisational commitment
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job performance
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turnover intention.
All these variables have been associated with job burnout either as its antecedents or its consequences, in prior research. The correlational results between these variables and burnout are described in the results section. ‘Discriminant validity’ is the degree to which two conceptually similar concepts are distinct (Hair et al., 1998). Discriminant validity was examined by studying the relationship between job burnout and job satisfaction. By distinguishing burnout from another psychological construct (i.e., job satisfaction in this case), that might be presumed to be confounded with it, one can obtain evidence of discriminant validity. Theoretical perspectives predict that job satisfaction and burnout are conceptually distinct concepts. Research has also argued that job satisfaction and burnout although overlapping, they are not identical dimensions (e.g., Wolpin et al., 1991). Tsigilis et al. (2004) established the discriminant validity between job satisfaction and burnout using structural equation modelling techniques and showed that the two constructs although highly correlated represent distinct responses to work. Similar associations between
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facets of job satisfaction and burnout were reported in most empirical studies (Barrick, 1989; Dolan, 1987; Pines et al., 1981).
3.7 Relationship between burnout and related concepts We discuss here the theoretical relationship between burnout and the concepts that we used for establishing the validity of the present scale.
3.8 Role conflict Research findings consistently support a positive relationship between role stressors (role conflict, role ambiguity) and burnout (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993; Jackson et al., 1986; Singh et al., 1994). Research shows that burnout is a mediator between role stressors and key behavioural and psychological job outcomes (Singh et al., 1994). Research has shown that role conflict along with role ambiguity is a significant antecedent of burnout (Low et al., 2001; Babakus et al., 1999; Sethi et al., 1999).
3.9 Work overload Work overload is the extent to which pace of work is regarded as excessive (Caplan et al., 1975). High workload has consistently been linked to emotional exhaustion (core of burnout) in a range of studies (Jackson et al., 1986; Maslach and Pines, 1977; Deery et al., 2002). Lee and Ashforth (1996), in their meta-analytic study, found that work overload and time pressure are the major antecedents of burnout.
3.10 Emotional labour Emotion work can be defined as the process of regulating feelings and expressions as part of the work role (Grandey, 2000). Particularly, in many of the newly created service jobs (like customer service representatives); employees are expected to display emotions that comply with certain norms or standards of the organisation which are designed to create a desired ‘state of mind’ in the customer. The most often cited negative outcome associated with emotional labour is burnout (e.g., Leiter and Maslach, 1988; Maslach, 1982; Morris and Feldman, 1996; Hochschild, 1979, 1983). In service roles, the expectations for long interactions with clients and the level of intensity and variety of emotional expressions needed have been proposed as defining dimensions of emotional labour and predictors of burnout (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993; Morris and Feldman, 1996).
3.11 Social support Social support involves interpersonal transactions such as showing emotional concern, providing instrumental aid, information and appraisal (House, 1981). According to the JD-R model of burnout (Demerouti et al., 2001), high job resources such as social support may reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs. A great deal of the research literature has suggested that development of social support systems in the job setting should reduce stress and burnout (House, 1981; LaRocco et al., 1980; Lee and Ashforth, 1996).
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3.12 Positive affectivity and negative affectivity Positive affectivity (PA) describes the disposition to perceive events and individuals in a generally positive and enthusiastic manner (Judge, 1993) while negative affectivity (NA) describes the disposition to perceive events and individuals in a generally negative manner (Watson and Clarke, 1984). The conservation of resources (COR) (Hobfoll, 2001) model of burnout posits that personal characteristics can act as key resources. There is evidence that various individual resource characteristics are related to job burnout (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993). Wright and Cropanzano (1998) found that PA was negatively and NA was positively related to emotional exhaustion.
3.13 Organisational commitment Commitment to an organisation is considered to reflect the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in that organisation (Steers, 1977). Several studies have found that organisational commitment is negatively associated with burnout (e.g., Lee and Ashforth, 1996; Sethi et al., 1999; Wright and Hobfoll, 2004).
3.14 Job performance One of the most commonly held and intuitively appealing negative consequences of burnout is a reduction in job performance (Maslach, 1982). Singh et al. (1994) provide some explanations why burnout should affect behavioural outcomes such as job performance. According to them, exhaustion diminishes the available energy of employees and leads to an impairment of the efforts put into work. Moreover, burnout entraps employees in a negative, vicious spiral in which they do not seek help or are not prone to strive for changes in their situation and, as a result, they continue to perform ineffectively. Finally, the experience of burnout reduces employees’ self-confidence in solving work-related problems (e.g., Bakker et al., 2003) and therefore their performance diminishes. Research indicates that emotional exhaustion (core of burnout) may be negatively related to job performance (Cropanzano et al., 2003; Wright and Bonett, 1997; Wright and Cropanzano, 1998; Wright and Hobfoll, 2004).
3.15 Turnover intention Turnover intention continues to be a variable of interest to researchers and practitioners as it can signal the need for interventions to prevent and reduce the occurrence of actual turnover. Turnover intention has been positively linked to burnout in a range of studies (e.g., Singh et al., 1994; Moore, 2000; Babakus et al., 1999). In a meta-analytic review, Lee and Ashforth (1996) found that emotional exhaustion and turnover intentions were correlated at .44 (Lee and Ashforth, 1993).
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Method
In the following section, we discuss the process of construction of the present job burnout scale including the sample used for carrying out the psychometric analyses of the scale and the measures used to establish the nomological and discriminant validity of the present scale.
4.1 Construction of the job burnout scale The researchers first reviewed the past literature on job burnout to gain a conceptual understudying of the phenomenon. Next, an exploratory study was conducted in two major cities of India. In-depth interviews were held with 15 employees, three respondents were from the hospitality industry comprising one head of HR and two employees in the grade of senior manager; eight respondents were from call centres comprising three heads of HR and five employees in the grade of senior manager and four respondents were from the software industry comprising one head of HR and three employees in the grade of senior manager. The method adopted was a semi-structured interview to explore the employees’ opinions and observations regarding job burnout as it occurred in their respective workplaces. Each interview lasted for approximately 30 minutes. The information obtained through the interviews was recorded by the researchers within 48 hours of conducting the interview. Through these interviews, the researchers got an insight into the nature of burnout as it manifests itself in the job context. The secondary data on burnout as well as the exploratory work (in-depth interviews) provided the basis for generation of an initial item pool of 70 items. Items were written in the form of statements about personal feelings or attitudes. The item pool consisted of both positively and negatively worded statements. The statements were all framed in the first person so as to enable the respondents to identify with them. The statements were required to be rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (5). The researchers examined the items analytically so as to develop a conceptual definition of burnout. The next step involved an expert-level screening of the item pool. Five experts were chosen from the management research domain comprising of faculty having more than 20 years of academic experience in the organisational behaviour domain from top-rated business schools in India. They were required to judge each item on two criteria – the representation of each statement with the conceptual definition on a 3-point scale (yes, no, not sure) and the semantics of each statement (i.e., whether it is ‘appropriately worded’ and ‘complex’ and/or ‘ambiguous’). Based on the expert judgments, only those items were retained which represented the conceptual definition and were ‘appropriately worded’ as judged by the majority of the five experts. This resulted in a reduction in the number of items from 70 to 53. The expert screening was followed by a pilot testing. A preliminary form of the scale, consisting of 53 items was pre-tested using a convenience sample of 30 professionals i.e., people working full-time and also engaged in a part time MBA course at a prestigious management institute in a major city of India. The respondents were required to rate each statement on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (5) and to indicate the ‘clarity’ of each statement on a 5-point Likert type scale ranging from ‘totally clear’ (1) to ‘totally ambiguous’ (5).
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Based on an analysis of the results of the pilot study, several items were eliminated, given item ambiguity, low levels of variance (less than 1) and low item-total correlation (less than 0.30). This resulted in a 30-item scale which was administered to a new sample of 303 respondents to further test its psychometric properties. Besides responses to the main questionnaire, these respondents were also required to provide information related to the face validity of the questionnaire in terms of ease of understanding and responding to the questions. Please note that two items were further eliminated based on the results of the factor analysis (refer factor analysis of job burnout scale in ‘results’ section), resulting in a final scale consisting of 28 items.
4.2 Sample The sample for testing the scale comprised 303 customer service professionals from voice-based call centre companies located in two major cities of India. These cities comprise a diverse population as people from all over India have migrated there in search of better job opportunities and a better lifestyle. Eight call centre companies were part of the research survey. Five of these were big call centres employing about 10,000–20,000 or even greater number of employees, two were medium-sized employing about 5,000 employees and one was a small call centre with less than 5,000 employees. Three companies were international call centres; four companies were both domestic as well as international call centres and one company was a domestic call centre. There was a mix of inbound and outbound call centres. The companies included in the sample were catering to clients in banking, financial services, insurance, mortgage, telecom and media, healthcare and travel and hospitality sectors. We discuss here profiles of two BPOs that are represented in the sample, without revealing their names. X call centre, established in 1992, is a pioneer in the BPO industry in India. Its talented and dedicated workforce of 12,000 people demonstrate a superior operational efficiency in over 500 different processes handling 700 MM transactions and customer contacts annually. It offers product driven processing, call centre (inbound and outbound) and technology services to its international financial founder group in 50 countries on a 24 × 7 basis. Y call centre is India’s top ten BPO firms which registered revenue of Rs.263.6 crore in March, 2008 and Rs.251.5 crore in June 2008. It is working towards setting up two BPO centres in Asia and further plans to set up BPOs in the USA and Brazil as well. The demographic details of the sample are described here. With respect to ‘age’, 113 respondents were in the age group of 18–22 years, 131 respondents were in the age group of 23–27 years, 40 respondents were in the age group of 28–32 years, 13 respondents were in the age group of 33–37 years and six respondents were in the age group of 38 years and above, with the maximum age of respondents being 49 years. With respect to ‘gender’, 215 respondents were males and 88 respondents were females. In terms of ‘educational qualification’, 74 respondents possessed a high school certificate, 180 respondents were graduates, 26 respondents were post-graduates, 22 respondents possessed a special degree or diploma and one respondent did not specify this detail. In terms of ‘work experience’, 159 respondents had six months to two years of work experience, 69 respondents had 2–4 years of work experience, 26 respondents had 4–6 years of work experience, 11 respondents had 6–8 years of work experience, eight respondents had 8–10 years of work experience, 14 respondents had more than ten years of work experience and 16 respondents did not specify this detail. With respect to
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‘marital status’, 62 respondents were married and 241 respondents were single. In terms of ‘family background’, 140 respondents came from nuclear families, 129 respondents came from joint families, five respondents came from extended families and 29 respondents did not reveal this detail. Based on the data from this sample of 303 respondents, the scale was subject to a statistical analysis to establish its reliability and validity.
4.3 Measures 4.3.1 Role conflict Role conflict was measured using the eight-item instrument developed by Rizzo et al. (1970). Low et al. (2001) reported a reliability coefficient of 0.74 for role conflict. Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.70.
4.3.2 Work overload Work overload was measured using a 5-point Likert type scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (5). Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.71.
4.3.3 Emotional labour Emotional labour was measured by an adaptation of the emotional labour scale developed by Brotheridge and Lee (1998) using the dimensions of emotional labour-variety and emotional labour-surface acting. These authors reported reliability coefficients of 0.76 for the variety dimension and 0.79 for the surface acting dimension. Cronbach’s alpha of the scales in this study was 0.74 for the variety dimension and 0.59 for the surface acting dimension.
4.3.4 Social support Social support was measured by an adaptation of the scale by House (1981). The scale operationalised social support in terms of three dimensions co-worker, supervisory and peer support. Co-worker and peer support scales have displayed acceptable reliability and validity in research (Iverson et al., 1995), as has supervisory support (Constable, 1983; House, 1981; Iverson and Kuruvilla, 1995). Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.82 for the co-worker dimension, 0.88 for the supervisory dimension and 0.84 for the peer dimension and 0.86 for the composite scale.
4.3.5 PA and NA PA and NA were measured by an adaptation of the multidimensional personality index obtained from David Watson (Agho et al., 1992). The reliability and validity ranged from 0.72 to 0.95 as reported by Price and Mueller (1986). Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.73 for PA and 0.75 for NA.
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4.3.6 Organisational commitment Organisational commitment was measured using the nine-item version of the organisational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) proposed by Porter et al. (1974). The reliability coefficient for this scale was 0.90 as reported by Low et al. (2001). Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.90.
4.3.7 Job performance Job performance was measured by a four-item self-report scale adapted from prior research (Behrman and Perrault, 1984; Cravens et al., 1993). The reliability coefficient of the extended nine-item scale was 0.84 as reported by Low et al. (2001). Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.78.
4.3.8 Turnover intention Turnover intention was measured using a four-item scale based on Jackson et al. (1987) and Mitchel (1981). Moore (2000) reported a reliability coefficient of 0.92 for this scale. Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.79.
4.3.9 Job satisfaction Job satisfaction was measured by a shortened version (containing six items) of the established scale of Brayfield and Rothe (1951), which has displayed acceptable reliability and validity (Price and Mueller, 1981, 1986). Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.75.
5
Results
The following section discusses the results of the factor analysis of the items of the scale; describes the descriptive statistics, inter-correlations and reliability estimates for the scale and presents data on the nomological and discriminant validity of the scale.
5.1 Factor analysis of job burnout scale The three-factor solution for a factor analysis of the 30 items based on the sample of 303 respondents and using principal factoring with iteration and varimax rotation is presented in Table 1. All the three factors had eigen values greater than one and they accounted for 55% of the variance. Thus, they are considered sub-scales of the inventory. The first sub-scale was labelled ML. The 12 items in this sub-scale described feelings of boredom, emptiness, frustration and an attitude of escapism related to lack of meaning in the job. On this factor, item five, namely, ‘I feel imprisoned by my work’ had the highest loading (0.71).The second sub-scale was labelled EX. The nine items in this sub-scale described a state of exhaustion and tiredness resulting from the job. On this factor, item 18, namely, ‘I feel like a candle burning at both ends’ had the highest loading (0.72). The third subscale was labelled DM. The seven items in this sub-scale described a state of lack of enthusiasm or emotional energy on the job. On this factor, item 24, that is, ‘I experience a
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loss of confidence when I am working’ had the highest loading (0.72). In each of these three sub-scales, namely, ML, EX and DM, high mean scores correspond to higher degrees of experienced burnout. Two items loaded on another factor but we did not take it into account because of two factors. First, the number of items was too little. Secondly, they were not appearing in the theoretical direction. The factor analysis thus resulted in a 28-item scale for measuring job burnout. Table 1
Factor loadings eigen values and percentage of total variance for three factors of burnout (N=303)
Statement 1
Work activities that I once found enjoyable now feel like drudgery.
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
I experience low energy levels at the job. I am bored with my job. I have become more cynical about my job. I feel imprisoned by my work. I feel like leaving the office and going away. I have reached the end of the tunnel. I feel cheated at the workplace. My saturation point from the job is nearing. I don’t feel like doing my job anymore. My job feels painfully empty. I feel trapped in my job. I feel like I am a human machine at the workplace. I feel like my organisation has cut my wings. I feel drained and used up in my job. I feel like I am in a rut. My efforts go unappreciated at the workplace. I feel like a candle burning at both ends. I feel like I am stuck in a situation from which I cannot extricate myself.
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
I feel disillusioned about my job. I feel I am in a no-win situation. My enthusiasm declines as the work day progresses. .My mental energy gets sapped by the job. I experience a loss of confidence when I am working. I would not like to work in this organisation for long. I have become detached with my family since I started this job. I wonder why I am doing what I am doing at my job. My work does not make any sense to me.
Eigen values Percent of total variance Notes: Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalisation. ML=meaninglessness, EX=exhaustion, DM=demotivation.
Derived factors ML EX DM .47 .47 .66 .65 .71 .69 .70 .44 .65 .65 .69 .58 .50 .64 .59 .65 .72 .72 .62 .57 .60 .65 .65 .72 .45 .41 .53 .49 13.41 44.71
1.66 5.53
1.31 4.37
Development and validation of job burnout scale in the Indian context Table 2
Inter-correlations and Cronbach’s alphas’ (N=303)
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5.2 Descriptive statistics, inter-correlations and reliability estimates for the job burnout sub-scales The information relating to the descriptive statistics (mean, SD), inter-correlations and reliability estimates for the sub-scales can be obtained from Table 2. It is seen from Table 2 that there is a high inter-correlation among the three sub-scales ranging from 0.66 (between EX and DM) to 0.82 (between ML and EX). This can be explained in terms of the factor loadings as revealed by the factor analysis (Table 1). High inter-correlations among the three sub-scales derive from the fact that some of the component items on each sub-scale also had some loadings on the other. According to research (Maslach and Jackson, 1981), such a correlation is in accord with theoretical expectations that these are separate but related aspects of burnout. It is also seen that the sub-scales demonstrated high levels of internal consistency, as estimated by the Cronbach’s coefficient alpha (Table 2). The reliability coefficients were 0.93 for the ML sub-scale; 0.91 for the EX sub-scale and 0.80 for the DM sub-scale. The reliability coefficient for the composite scale was 0.95. Thus, we observe that the scale has adequate internal consistency reliability since generally a value for alpha of 0.70 is considered to be sufficient (Nunnally, 1978).
5.3 Validity of job burnout scale The scale demonstrated high face validity as judged by the feedback from the respondents. Further, nomological validity and discriminant validity were estimated for the scale. The correlational results depicting the same are presented in Table 2 which also gives the means, SDs and Cronbach’s alphas’ for each of the scales.
5.4 Nomological validity 5.4.1 Burnout and role stress As was predicted, role conflict was positively related to ML (r = 0.29, p < .01), EX (r = 0.30, p < .01) and DM (r = 0.25, p < .01) (refer Table 2).
5.4.2 Burnout and work overload As was predicted, there was a significant positive relationship between work overload and the three dimensions of job burnout, namely ML (r = 0.48, p < .01), EX (r = 0.43, p < .01) and DM (r = 0.40, p < .01) (refer Table 2).
5.4.3 Burnout and emotional labour As was predicted, there was a positive relationship between emotional labour-surface acting and ML (r = 0.18, p < .01), EX (r = 0.15, p < .01) and DM (r = 0.21, p < .01) (Table 2). However, the emotional labour-variety dimension of emotional labour did not approach statistical significance.
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5.4.4 Burnout and social support As was predicted, there was a significant negative relationship of social support-co-worker with ML (r = –0.13, p < .05) and EX (r = –0.21, p < .01) (Table 2). Its relationship with DM (r = –0.05) was not found to be significant. Similarly, there was a significant negative relationship between social support-supervisor and ML (r = –0.46, p < .01), EX (r = –0.48, p < .01) and DM (r = –0.38, p < .01) (Table 2). Further, there was a significant negative relationship of social support-peer with ML (r = –0.29, p < .01), EX (r = –0.39, p < .01) and DM (r =–0.24, p < .01) (refer Table 2).
5.4.5 Burnout and PA, NA As was predicted, PA was negatively related to ML (r = –0.27, p < .01), EX (r = –0.22, p < .01) and DM (r = –0.31, p < .01) (Table 2). Similarly, as was predicted, NA was positively related to ML (r = 0.37, p < .01), EX (r = 0.37, p < .01) and DM (r = 0.31, p < .01) (refer Table 2).
5.4.6 Burnout and organisational commitment As was predicted, there was a significant negative relationship between organisational commitment and ML (r = –0.46, p < .01), EX (r = –0.40, p < .01) and DM (r = –0.36, p < .01) (refer Table 2).
5.4.7 Burnout and job performance As was predicted, there was a significant negative relationship between job performance and ML (r = –0.29, p < .01), EX (r = –0.24, p < .01) and DM (r = –0.32, p < .01) (refer Table 2).
5.4.8 Burnout and turnover intention As was predicted, there was a significant positive relationship between turnover intention and ML (r = 0.42, p < .01), EX (r = 0.44, p < .01) and DM (r = 0.34, p < .01) (refer Table 2). Of the 12 variables chosen for demonstrating nomological validity, ten variables are significantly related to all the three dimensions of job burnout; social support co-worker shows no significant relationship with the demotivation dimension only and emotional labour variety shows no significant relationship with any of the three dimensions. Thus, we can infer that the present scale shows high nomological validity based on the expected relationships of the majority of the variables with job burnout.
5.4.9 Discriminant validity Table 2 depicts that job satisfaction had a moderate negative relationship with ML (r = –0.45, p < .01); EX (r = –0.43, p < .01) and DM (r = –0.37, p < .01). This supports the proposed relationship and thus we can infer that job burnout is distinct from job satisfaction. The given finding establishes the discriminant validity of the scale.
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Discussion
The assumption in cross-cultural comparative studies that nations are culturally homogenous is an oversimplified view of reality. In India, for example, multiple cultures exist within the borders of the nation. There are cultural differences among various locations in India as a consequence of different degrees of infrastructural development in those locations (Panda and Gupta, 2004). A review of country clusters on the basis of identified cultural dimensions also reveals that Indian cultural profile is too complex to be marked off under one category (e.g., Ronen and Kraut, 1977; Schwartz, 1999; Ronen and Shenkar, 1985). Even common knowledge will reveal a cultural diversity in India that belies any imagination. Even though the concept of burnout has a western origin, it is applicable all over the world. We believe that measures of burnout developed in the western context may not be particularly applicable in all cultural contexts. To support this claim, the MBI, the standard instrument to measure job burnout, has been questioned on cross-cultural grounds (Kristensen et al., 2005). In view of this consideration, this paper proposes a scale to measure job burnout validated with a sample of CSRs working in call centres in India. Thus, drawing from the cultural diversity within India (Panda and Gupta, 2004), we have attempted to develop a scale valid across cultural boundaries. The statistical analyses of the present scale revealed a three-dimensional structure comprising ML, EX and DM. Further, the scale shows high internal consistency estimates and the convergent and discriminant validity is also high. Though further research on the scale remains to be done, the scale can be used as a sound measure of burnout in cross-cultural studies of the phenomenon.
7
Concluding remarks
The main contribution of the present scale is that it addresses the issue of cross-cultural validity of burnout measures. Validating the scale with a sample, drawn from the cross-cultural diversity of India, (Panda and Gupta, 2004) enables cross-cultural validity of the scale. Moreover, while the MBI was validated with traditional human services roles; the present burnout scale is validated with a more contemporary form of service workers i.e., CSRs in call centres, a group which is susceptible to high burnout. In terms of psychometric analyses, the scale possesses high reliability and validity estimates. In future, we intend to test the scale with larger samples across additional locations of India so as to further establish the claim of cross-cultural validity. However, the validation and evaluation of a new questionnaire is a long process, including not only statistical analyses but also the use of the questionnaire in surveys, intervention studies and collaboration with workplaces. We encourage researchers to adopt the present scale in their research on burnout, so as to substantially establish its properties.
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