Work-related burnout in the context of leadership style, organisation culture and social networks in a high technology Trinidad and Tobago company

Abstract

There is a scarcity of burnout research in Trinidad and Tobago. The study examines an organisation about to embark on major transformational change, but has concerns regarding its leadership, dominant culture and lack of social network interactions to achieve desired performance and cohesiveness. The study is unique, hypothesising that leadership style, organisation culture and social networks collectively impact burnout. The research grounds its approach to understanding burnout in the Conservation of Resources theory (Hobfoll 1989). A mixed methodology approach (primarily positivist) using the most proven scales for all four components was undertaken. Consistent with conducting a social network analysis, a full network sampling of management team was used to test the hypotheses, ( see Borgatti et al. 2002). The structural equation path analysis examines the hypothesised relationships. Cronbach’s Alphas and Descriptive Statistics were created using SPSS. The study used partial least squares (PLS-SEM) to estimate the structural equation model based upon the sample size (n=32) and causality considerations. The results support the hypotheses, fitting well within the framework of the Conservation of Resources theory. The results indicate that the emotional exhaustion component of burnout is influenced directly by management centrality power, by workload reflected by operational centrality and by differences in preferred leadership style.