The Moderating Role of Ethical Leadership in Preventing Employees’ Burnout.

Abstract

The organizations are rapidly recognizing the importance of concepts i.e. emotional exhaustion and employee burnout as previous research has proved that these phenomena have detrimental effects on the physical health of the employees, which as a consequence reduce their job productivity and satisfaction. The current study sets out to investigate how work overload causes employees to feel emotionally exhausted which in turn leads them toward burnout. The study explores the moderating impact of ethical leadership on the relationship between emotional exhaustion and employee burnout such that when ethical leadership is practiced at the workplace the chances of employees to burnout as a result of feeling emotionally exhausted gets reduced, and when ethical leadership is not exercised in the organization the relationship between emotional exhaustion and employee burnout becomes stronger. In order to analyze these hypothesis, the primary data was collected from the teachers of public sector universities using the sample size of 385. The rationale behind the sample choice was that previous literature has proved that teaching staff of public sector universities were more prone to experience employee burnout because of the demanding working conditions and increased work load as compared to teachers working in private sector universities. The data was analyzed using SPSS software in order to derive meaningful findings and conclusions. Different types of regression analysis were run to test the proposed hypothesis. Results indicated that all of the hypothesis were confirmed and the model was proved to be significant. The work overload caused employees to feel emotionally exhausted. And the emotional exhaustion lead employees toward employee burnout as a result. The emotional exhaustion significantly mediated the impact of work overload on employee burnout. The ethical leadership moderated the relationship between emotional exhaustion and employee burnout. These findings are beneficial and helpful for the organizations as it would enable them to take proper measures to ensure good mental health of their employees so that their productivity can be enhanced. It helps the organizations and mangers in understanding how, if properly practiced, ethical leadership can prevent employees from burning out. Furthermore, the study discusses the conclusions drawn from the results, practical implications of the findings, limitations, and recommendations as far as future research is concerned.