Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction among Teachers during Times of Burnout

Abstract

Organizations want to maximize productivity by minimizing stress, as increased levels of stress and burnout may have significant implications for organizational performance such as reduced job satisfaction and lowered organizational commitment. Also certain occupations are linked more to burnout than the others. The present exploratory study undertakes the examination of burnout among teachers in the university as they are an essential part of a successful educational system. Organizational commitment is essential for retaining and attracting well qualified workers as only satisfied and committed workers will be willing to continue their association with the organization and make considerable effort towards achieving its goals.

This work is significant for two reasons: It attempts to develop and test a model for burnout and its effect on job satisfaction and the subsequent effect of job satisfaction on organizational commitment; It signifies one of the first attempts to develop a linkage among burnout, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment among teachers.

This study examines three factors of burnout as potential antecedents of 153 university teacher's job satisfaction, and the effect of increased job satisfaction on commitment among employees toward their organization.

Structural Equation Modeling results indicate that: All three factors of burnout namely, depersonalization, reduced personal accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion lead to decreased job satisfaction. Greater job satisfaction contributes significantly towards an increase in organizational commitment. Out of the three dimensions of burnout, female teachers score higher on emotional exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment indicating that they could not work the way they wanted to with their students or that they have less influence on their students, whereas male teachers score higher on depersonalization. In terms of job satisfaction, females show higher levels of job satisfaction as compared to men, perhaps due to low expectations about job status among female teachers as compared to male teachers. A perceived difference in alternative employment opportunities between genders offers an explanation to the finding that women are more committed to organizations than their male counterparts

The results of the study have implications for the management of educational institutions as employee burnout may have important consequences for the organization. Since teachers are a valuable resource to educational institutes, management must invest significant resources in the assessment of their working environment, both mental and physical, to maximize the quality of service delivery.