This chapter provides the general background and circumstances of the workplace characteristics before introducing the issues of Job burnout, especially Emotional Exhaustion, Job Demands and Psychological Contract Breach in service industry. Besides, the purpose and significance of this research would also be given in more details, together with clear definition of all terms related to the topic so that readers have panoramic view about the study.
Background of the Study
Working is an essential part of human being, constituting 90,000 hours of an average person’s lifetime (Pryce-Jones, 2011), which is approximately one third of a lifetime. Working is not only a means of living, but also the way to achieve recognition, wealth and social status in this modern world.
Meanwhile, workplace can also be considered the second home for a lot of people who sometimes even spend more time with their job than their family. Therefore, in the workplace the relationship between employers and employees also contributes to service quality (Yee, Guo, & Yeung, 2015), job satisfaction (Abun et. al, 2018) and work commitment. However, the pressure and demands of the work are usually not easy to handle, and there is a growing concern for keeping mental health in the workplace.
Specifically, burnout has become one of the most controversial occupational health issues for employees. According to Leiter and Maslach (2003), Job burnout consists of three dimensions including the feeling of energy depletion (Emotional Exhaustion), detachment from work (Cynicism) and inconfidence or ineffectiveness at work (Perceived Professional Efficacy). If not preventing or alleviating burnout in advance, employees are easily to have higher job disatisfaction, absenteesim and finally increase in turnover rate (Leiter, 1988; Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998). Thus this study focused on investigating the core dimension of burnout – Emotional Exhaustion, also the first symptom that appears as a way to understand and find out solutions for this issue.
The most crucial thing about burnout is that its concept emerged from service industry, or human related work (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). Jobs in this industry normally involve direct contact with customers or suppliers, so the relationship in the workplace not only includes employers, employees but also includes customers, resulting in high demands for quantitative, emotional and psychological aspects. Employees normally act on the behalf of the organization to bring out solutions or help to
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clients, therefore they are expected to always serve with a smile, while controlling negative emotions.
These emotional labors are expected to regulate emotions to fulfill job requirement (Grandey & Alicia, 2000) by surface and deep acting. Specifically, confronting the high Emotional Demand at work, employees either show the appropriate emotions in serving customers while not changing their real feelings (surface acting), or adjust their feelings to match the job requirements (deep acting).
Emotional labor process was proven by past scholars such as Jeung, Kim and Chang (2018) to cause Job burnout, including Emotional Exhaustion, therefore, Job Demands with sub dimensions as Workload, Cognitive and Emotional Demand all became a matter of concern for Vietnam service workers.
In Vietnam, service industry now contributes 42.7% of Vietnamese Gross Domestic Product, with 19,4 million workers, constituting 35,8% all employees nation-wide (General Statistics Office, 2019). These figures show the importance of service industry in Vietnam and thus Emotional Exhaustion problem is worth considering in this industry for better improvement in productivity and commitment in the workplace. Therefore, to have a comprehensive overview at the Emotional Exhaustion issue, this study will focus on the service industry and also the aspect of Job Demands that are related to the jobs.
Additionally, the relationship between employees and employers also plays a crucial role in affecting the mental health of workers and their commitment. From employers’ perspective, long-term success comes from the management of human resources, therefore understanding the expectations and abilities of workers is very important. On the other hand, employees go to work to contribute, and also receive benefits as a means of living, but not all benefits are stated black and white. Therefore, besides the written labor contract, psychological contract also provides a framework for establishing employment relationship (Robinson & Rosseau, 1994). It refers to the unwritten agreement of both sides (workers and employers) about the mutual expectations and obligations.
When this contract is breached, the trust of employees went down significantly (Liu, Huang, Huang,
& Chen, 2013; Robinson, 1996), as a result when one of the two parties did not fulfill their promises, even though they had the capacity (Rousseau, 1995). When employees work but do not receive what they expect from the employers, Emotional Exhaustion, counter-productive behavior, lower job satisfaction and higher intention to leave may occur (Buunk & Schaufeli, 1999; Robinson & Rosseau, 1994).
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Problem Statement
Along with Job burnout, Emotional Exhaustion has been proven in past research to have negative impacts on health and work outcomes. “The experience of exhaustion reduces workers' initiative while progressively limiting their capacity for demanding work” (Leiter & Maslach, 2005, p.50). Emotional Exhaustion also leads to depression, decrease in work performance and higher turnover intention (Baba, Tourigny, Wang, & Liu, 2009; Yavas, Babakus, & Karatepe, 2008). Some scholars also found physiological consequences including headache, mental disorders and insomnia (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001; Kim, Ji, & Kao, 2011). These results showed that the importance of Emotional Exhaustion in the workers’ productivity and long-term success of organizations. According to Lee and Ashforth (1996), Emotional Exhaustion was found to have stronger impact on work-related outcomes than other two dimensions of burnout. Other scholars including Schaufeli, Maslach and Marek (2017) also conceptualized Emotional Exhaustion to be “core meaning” of burnout, leading to more recent scholars such as Halbesleben and Bowler (2007) to value Emotional Exhaustion as separate topic of research. In recognition of the appropriateness of Emotional Exhaustion as the single burnout dimension that has significant impact on work outcomes and employees’ wellbeing, this study focused more on Emotional Exhaustion issue.
However, there is still very few research about job burnout or Emotional Exhaustion in particular in Vietnam market. Only few occupations have been proven to have high probability of Emotional Exhaustion including technological staffs (Ninh, 2014), nurses (Nguyen, Kitaoka, Sukigara,
& Thai, 2018) or employees in banks (Linh, Jin, Kiong, & Fah, 2016) but there is no result proven in service industry in general. Furthermore, among these previous research, no scholars focus on the impact of Job Demands on Emotional Exhaustion. The majority of this relationship was proven in Western context by Maslach, Schaufeli, and Leiter (2001); Schaufeli, Bakker and Van Rhenen (2009).
Considering Vietnam as a fast developing country with 35.8% working population coming from service industry (General Statistics Office, 2019) and the threat of mental health in this field, this research filled the gap in literature by examining the impact of Job Demands (quantitative, emotional and cognitive) on Emotional Exhaustion in Vietnam service industry.
Past research also investigated moderators that affect the relationship between Job Demands and Emotional Exhaustion such as team cohesiveness and social support (Westman, Bakker, Roziner,
& Sonnentag, 2011) or psychological capitals (Nohlman, 2016). However, there is a lack of
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psychological contract research as potential moderator for this association. The relationship between workers and employers in fact was the foundation for long-term trust and commitment in the workplace. Therefore, when Psychological Contract Breach occurs, loss of trust and higher rate of intention to leave take place (Abela & Debono, 2019). Meanwhile, some past research showed that frequency of Psychological Contract Breach occurred in workplace ranged from 25% (Turnley &
Feldman, 1998) to over 90% (Robinson & Morrison, 2000). When Psychological Contract Breach occurs more frequently, trust is negatively affected may lead to the negative feelings in employees.
Together with high pressure at work, high demands in terms of Workload, Cognitive and Emotional aspects, the effect of Psychological Contract Breach may cause worse Emotional Exhaustion. This prediction may help the organization understand Emotional Exhaustion in more detail with more caution on the relationship with employees to avoid future serious consequences. Therefore, it is useful to look at Psychological Contract Breach with potential moderating role on the association of Job Demands and Emotional Exhaustion.
Research Purpose
This study aimed to provide empirical evidence for the relationship among Job Demands, Psychological Contract Breach and Emotional Exhaustion. There were two main objectives in this study. First, to discover the influence of Job Demands on Emotional Exhaustion in Vietnam service industry. It also provided insight on how each dimension of Job Demands in terms of quantitative, emotional and Cognitive Demand affect Emotional Exhaustion. Second, to explore the moderating role of Psychological Contract Breach in the association between Job Demands and Emotional Exhaustion.
Research Questions
This study focused on broadening knowledge about Emotional Exhaustion issue under the relationship with Job Demands and Psychological Contract Breach. There were two questions this study aimed to answer:
1. Are Job Demands related to Emotional Exhaustion?
2. Does Psychological Contract Breach have moderating influence on the relationship between Job Demands and Emotional Exhaustion?
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Significance of the Study
This study has both theoretical contribution to the literature review and practical significance for organizations as stated below:
Contribution to The Organizational Management
This study could contribute to raising awareness of Emotional Exhaustion and its related correlates in terms of Job Demands in the service industry. As a result, organizational managers would have more comprehensive look into which components of Job Demands have bad effect on Emotional Exhaustion to identify solutions. In the long term, human resources practitioners can design interventions that alleviate Emotional Exhaustion rate and also prevent job burnout from occurring in the early stage, leading to more productivity and commitment in the workplace. Furthermore, the relationship between workers and employers would also be analyzed via Psychological Contract Breach, thus help organizational managers understand the current situations and its effect on Emotional Exhaustion issue.
Contribution to The Literature
The result of this study would provide empirical evidence to the association of Job Demands which are related to service jobs including Workload, Emotional and Cognitive Demand with Emotional Exhaustion following the Job demand-resources theory. Furthermore, there is a lack of research about the Psychological Contract Breach as moderator in occupational health issue.
Therefore, this study would fill these gaps in the literature review about burnout problem in Vietnam service industry, as well as the moderating effect of Psychological Contract Breach in the relationship of Job Demands with Emotional Exhaustion.
Delimitations
- This study is delimited to focus on employees working in service industry in Vietnam.
- This study is delimited to using quantitative research method and survey as main instrument to collect data.
- This study is delimited to investigate only three instruments, including Job Demands, Emotional Exhaustion and Psychological Contract Breach.
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Definition of Key Terms Job Demands
Job Demands are characterized as “the degree to which the working environment contains stimuli that peremptorily require attention and response” (Jones & Fletcher, 1996, p.34). More specifically, Job Demands is about quantitative (Workload – the amount of work required or time constraints), cognitive (the level of hardness required mentally or memory), emotional (demands related to level of emotion or feelings in working) and physical requirements of a position (Houtman, 2005). This study used the concept of Jone and Fletcher (1996) for Job Demands with three above-mentioned dimensions.
In general, Workload refers to the required volume of tasks in a job, which needs to be done in a specific timespan. In this study, Workload is defined according to pace and volume of the tasks (Spector & Jex, 1998).
Meanwhile, Cognitive Demands reflects the degree to which the task requires workers to use cognitive resources such as concentration or memory (Pejtersen, Kristensen, Borg, & Bjorner, 2010).
These demands are common in work that includes mental analysis of data, making inferences from resources or focusing for long time with logical thinking.
Emotional Demands regard the psychological or emotional effort in interactions or other aspects while working (Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2003). Thus, because of some job characteristics, workers have to show appropriate emotions all the time.
Emotional Exhaustion
Emotional Exhaustion, together with cynicism and professional efficiency are main dimensions of Job burnout, which refers to a state of physical and mental syndrome (Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach,
& Jackson, 1996). First, Emotional Exhaustion, or emotional depletion results when individuals cannot meet organization’s excessive demands and cope with continuous stress. Then cynicism occurs with emotional distance towards customers. Last but not least, professional efficacy includes both social and non-social facets of accomplishment at work.
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Psychological Contract Breach
Psychological contract has been under research since 1960s by Argyris (1960) or Schein (1965) because of its potential effect on employees’ mental health and commitment. In this study, psychological contract refers to the exchange of benefits, beliefs and responsibilities between two parties- workers and employers (Rousseau, 1989). Psychological Contract Breach occurs when employees perceive the unfairness between efforts and rewards or employer did not fulfill their promises even though employees already completed obligations (Robinson & Morrison, 2000).
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