情绪劳动工作人员心理授权与离职意向的关系:工作倦怠的中介作用

The Relationship Between Psychological Empowerment and Turnover Intention of Emotional Labor Workers:the Mediating Effect of Job Burnout

本研究目的是考察心理授权、工作倦怠和离职意向的关系。研究以某大型通讯企业呼叫中心的309名客服代表为研究对象,采用问卷调查方式对客服代表的心理授权、工作倦怠和离职意向进行调查。结构方程模型的结果显示,心理授权对离职意向有负向影响,工作倦怠对离职意向有正向影响。其中,心理授权先影响情绪衰竭,再影响玩世不恭,最后对离职意向起负向预测作用。研究结果支持了工作倦怠在心理授权和离职意向之间的中介作用。

The high turnover rate of emotional labour workers is an important management issue recently. Many emotional labour workers experience high burnout, and feel emotionally exhausted, indifferent to their work and reduced personal accomplishment. This psychological state exerts negative impact on individuals, and induces mental and physical problems. Burnout may also result in a strong intention to leave the job and even actual turnover. According to job resource and demand models, the higher the perceived resource, the lower the burnout level. Psychological empowerment reflects an active orientation towards a work role. It is a motivational construct about an employee’s perception of having choice in doing tasks, having ability to perform the job well, being able to have an influence on the environment, and the meaningfulness of the job. Individuals with high psychological empowerment will see themselves as competent and able to influence their jobs and environment in a meaningful way, act proactively, show initiative, and perform independently. In this way, psychologically empowered individuals will perceive less burnout and tend to stay on in the organization. Furthermore, several researchers proposed the association among burnout dimensions was a causal process instead of co-occurring phenomena, and higher levels of emotional exhaustion were associated with higher levels of cynicism over time. Thus, in this study, we hypothesized the relationship between psychological empowerment and turnover intention is mediated by emotional exhaustion and cynicism in order. Data was collected from 309 customer service employees. 330 questionnaires were distributed in total, and the usage rate was 93.6%. Males took up 31.7% and the average age was 23.84 years. The average tenure was 11.2 months, and 83.3% of the participants were married. Regarding education, 18.8% of the employees finished high school, 72.9% of them have a college degree, and 8.2% had bachelor＇s degrees or above. Established measureds were used to capture the key variables in this study. A translation of the entire 12-item psychological empowerment scale by Spreitzer（1995） was used. The scale consisted of four three-item dimensions capturing meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a four-dimension structure. In this study, internal reliability estimate （α） was 0.82. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey （MBI-GS） was used to assess levels of burnout. In this study, exhaustion （five items） and cynicism （five items） were included. Internal reliability estimates （α） were 0.86 and 0.81 respectively. A three-item turnover intention scale developed by Liang was used. In this study, internal reliability estimate （α） was 0.87. Structural equation modelling was employed to examine the hypothesized model. In order to provide a stringent test of the theoretical model, we examined several alternative models. The result demonstrated that psychological empowerment was negatively associated with turnover intention, job burnout was positively associated with turnover intention, and job burnout mediated the relationship between psychological empowerment and turnover intention. Furthermore, cynicism mediated the relationship between emotional exhaustion and job burnout. To sum up, the primary goal of this study was to investigate the mediation role of burnout in the relationship between psychological empowerment and turnover intention. The result partially confirmed this hypothesis. The findings demonstrated that in a stressful work environment such as emotional labour, lack of psychological empowerment has negative consequences for nurses in the increased level of burnout experience and turnover intention. Several implications can be inferred from this study. Human resources management needs to emphasize empowerment strategies to reduce burnout experience and retain emotional labour workers.