직무탈진과 팀 탈진에 대한 상동모형(homology model) 고찰

The purpose of this study was to investigate job burnout of team members in organizations. Due to global competition and economic recession, individuals in organizations perceive more pressure from their work conditions. Organizations need to recognize the negative psychological aspects of their employees to achieve effectiveness even with the tough business environment. In addition to stress at individual level, members in teams may experience the negative psychology in common given the fact that more organizations assign a collective set of responsibility to members in team organization system. Thus, this study suggested a multilevel homologous model of job burnout in which the nature of job burnout at individual level shares some similarity in conceptual structure with its counterpart at team level. Based on the theoretical similarity of the burnout constructs, team burnout was conceptualized as high team cynicism and reduced team efficacy. This construct is consistent to the individual job burnout that is consists of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced self-efficacy. The homologous model in this study assumes the functional relationships of team-level burnout with job burnout at individual level. This assumption indicates that the variability in terms of stress level among team members not only comes from individuals’ work conditions but also is associated with team-level burnout that is shared among team members. To test the functional relationship, the following hypothesis was established. H1 : Team burnout will have top-down relationship with job burnout. To explore the functional similarity between team burnout and job burnout, this study also examined the sources (i.e., stressors) of the two types of burnout, respectively. Thus, in addition to the top-down effect of team burnout to individual job burnout, this study examined stressors-burnout relationships at both levels. The relationships at individual level are based on previous arguments that workload functions as job pressure and team leader support functions as lack of support. The following two hypotheses were established to test relationships between individual stressors and job burnout. H2 : Work overload will be positively related with job burnout. H3 : Team leader support will be negatively related with job burnout. In terms of a functional similarity in homologous model of burnout, this study proposed parallel arguments at team level that team coordination functions as a source of pressure at team level and organizational support functions as lack of support aspect at team level. Thus, the following relationships between team level stressors and team burnout were hypothesized. H4 : Team coordination will be negatively related with team burnout. H5 : Organizational support will be negatively related with team burnout. Also, the study tested a cross-level mediation effect of team burnout between team level stressors and job burnout. Even with the functional similarity of stressor-burnout relationships at both level, team stressors may not directly affect individual job burnout because of the collective nature of team stressor. Provided the homology model and the top-down effect of team burnout, it is more likely that team stressors affect individual job burnout through team burnout. Therefore, this study hypothesized as follows. H6 : Team burnout will mediate the relationship between team coordination and job burnout. H7 : Team burnout will mediate the relationship between organizational support and job burnout. Data to test the hypotheses was collected from 217 individuals of 47 teams in 25 Korean organizations. In order to test the hypotheses, regression analysis and multilevel analysis were conducted using SPSS 13.0 and HLM 6.0. Also, multilevel construct validity was checked for team-level variables before main analyses. The results showed that team burnout affect individual job burnout significantly, supporting hypothesis 1. Individual level stressors were significantly associated with job burnout as predicted in hypothesis 2 and hypothesis 3. Combined with the support for that hypothesis 4 that examined the team coordination-team burnout relationship, the cross-level mediation effect of team burnout in hypothesis 6 was confirmed. However, the relationships of organizational support to team burnout were not founded so that the mediation effect of team burnout between organizational support job burnout was not supported, either. Thus, hypothesis 5 and hypothesis 7 were not supported. Results of this study suggest the importance of stress intervention at team level for individual well-being and organizational effectiveness as well. Even with the limitation of cross-sectional design of this study, the cross-level relationships between individual-and team-level stress phenomena provided a process model of homology in organization research. Therefore, the findings of this study may expand theoretical efforts to find stressor factors toward team level in addition to the traditional perspective at individual level. Previous research in job burnout has emphasized the individual-level perspective that individuals should perceive burnout differently even in the same work conditions due to differences in individual characteristics. By testing homologous relationships among team and individual burnout, this study provided a theoretical insight into multilevel processes toward job burnout. The study also provided organizations with practical implications regarding team level stress interventions, such as team coordination training to decrease team member’s job burnout. This type of systematic intervention may help organizations manage collective stressor factors that came from teamwork dynamics, thereby reducing team member’s burnout through decreased level of team-level burnout.