Antecedents and Consequences of Burnout in Accounting: Beyond the Role Stress Model

The burnout condition of employees is a well-known phenomenon in psychology and several applied business disciplines. Despite some degree of recognition in the practice community, little explicit academic accounting recognition of this topic appears to exist. This paper introduces the burnout construct by showing that it has not been captured by other concepts in the literature. In addition to hypothesizing that burnout is directly related to several behavioral and attitudinal outcomes in public accounting practice, this paper proposes that burnout mediates the impact of role stressors on those outcomes. Within a national sample of accountants, the burnout condition is found to negatively affect satisfaction and performance and to positively affect turnover intentions. Furthermore, burnout partially mediated the influence of role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload on those outcomes. To some extent, burnout is capable of separating the functional and dysfunctional aspects of the role stressors on job outcomes.