Organization, Management, and Client Effects on Staff Burnout

• Published in: Journal of health and social behavior 1995-12, Vol.36 (4), p.333-345
• Main Authors: Schulz, Rockwell, Greenley, James R., Brown, Roger
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Burnout; Burnout, Professional - etiology; Burnout, Professional - prevention & control; Burnout, Professional - psychology; Client Characteristics (Human Services); Clients; Community Mental Health Centers; Community Mental Health Services - organization & administration; Cross-Sectional Studies; Factors; Health care; Health Professions; Health staff related problems. Vocational training; Human Capital; Human Service Organizations; Humans; Individual Characteristics; Interpersonal Relationship; Job Satisfaction; Leadership; Linear Models; Management; Management Styles; Medical sciences; Mental disorders; Mental health; Mental Health Services; Mental Illness; Modeling; Multivariate Analysis; Occupational health; Occupational Stress; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Personnel Management; Process management; Psychological stress; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Risk Factors; Role Conflict; Schizophrenia; Self Efficacy; Severity; Sickness; Social behavior; Social Problems; Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry; Social research; Staff; Staffing; Wisconsin; Work Environment; Work environments; Working conditions
• ISSN: 0022-1465; 2150-6000
• DOI: 10.2307/2137323

Employee burnout is perceived to be a serious problem in human service organizations serving persons with severe mental illness. There has been considerable investigation of burnout and many of its possible causes, but little investigation of the role of client severity in relationship to burnout. Furthermore, theoretical models linking environmental context, organization structure, and management processes to burnout have seldom been proposed or examined. Building on our previous work, we employ a theoretical framework that conceptualizes environmental context, organization structure, management processes, client severity and staff characteristics as influencing work satisfaction and burnout. We examine this in a survey of 311 staff in 42 community mental health service organizations. Controlling for individual staff characteristics, results suggest that organization structure, culture, and management process are important to work environment and in turn to satisfaction and subsequently to burnout. Contrary to the literature, client severity was not associated with burnout nor to work dissatisfaction.