Nature of Job Burnout and its Certain Antecedents and Consequences among Customer Service Professionals

Abstract

The phenomenon of job burnout has been investigated in a variety of service occupations and settings. However, there has been a traditional focus on helping professionals (e.g., nurses, doctors, lawyers, teachers) and there is a lack of burnout research in occupations like frontline employees/customer service representatives. The dominance of the service sector in the global economy as well as the phenomenal growth of the BPO sector in India provides the impetus to investigate this phenomenon among frontline people (customer service professionals) in Indian call centres. Call centres pose distinct work demands, yet there is still no detailed and systematic understanding of the management practices and outcomes of call centres. Burnout and stress on call centres have been greatly acknowledged but until a few years ago hardly any empirical research had been conducted on employee stress in call centres (Holman, 2003), and this is more so in Indian context considering that they are an even newer development. Generally, models of burnout have looked at traditional demand and resource correlates of burnout in lieu of conservation of resources theory of stress (Hobfoll, 1989, Hobfoll & Freddy, 1933) which provides a framework for understanding how such correlates are related to burnout, particularly, in the context of service work. Therefore, the present study tests a comprehensive model of job burnout in the context of an emergence occupational profile, namely the customer service representatives in call centres and thereby makes a meaningful contribution to the literature field. Another objective of the study was to develop a standardized instrument to measure “job burnout”. Employee burnout is a topic of major interest for management researchers as well as practitioners because it has consequential implications for both individuals and organizations (e.g. Lee & Ashforth, 1993a, 1996). Thought the concept was first introduced some three decades ago, yet it continues to provoke much debate. The field is still grappling with basic issues like “what id burnout”, “what are its constituents”, and “how best to measure it”. Specifically, its measurement has been a controversial issue (Schaufeli & Dierendonck, 1993). The present scale that was developed was validated through a sample of customer service professionals from voice-based call centres in two locations, namely Mumbai and Ahmedabad. In developing this scale, an attempt has been made to remove the limitations of the existing scales of job burnout. At the outset, please note that the publication manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) (5th Edition) has been followed as a style guide for preparing the format of the present thesis. The study is divided into various chapters. Chapter 1 presents the review of the literature in various sections. The first section presents the literature on Call Centres. The second section presents the literature on Job Burnout, including burnout, largely dealing with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). The review of literature is instrumental in identification of the Research Gaps, which are discussed next. This is followed by the presentation of the Model for the study; the Research objectives and the Hypotheses.