Relationship of challenge and hindrance stressors with burnout and its three dimensions

The two-dimensional-work-stressor framework suggests that both challenge stressors and hindrance stressors have an undesirable (positive) relationship with burnout for all employees. However, the existing studies testing this framework either treated burnout as a global construct or used one burnout dimension and have not used age as a possible moderator. This paper reports two cross-sectional studies that examined the stressor-burnout relationship while burnout is conceptualized as three-dimensional (i.e., emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy). Results indicate that although challenge and hindrance stressors show a similar (positive) relationship with exhaustion, they have differing relationships with cynicism and inefficacy. This study also explored how life stage influences the relationships between the two stressors and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)(journal abstract)