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

Abstract 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 recognition of this topic appears to exist in the accounting literature. This paper develops the burnout construct for the accounting occupation, in part by showing that it has not been captured by other concepts in the literature. In addition to showing that burnout is directly related to several of the familiar behavioral and attitudinal outcomes in public accounting practice, this paper proposes that burnout is a key mediator of the impact of role stressors on critical outcomes. Within a national sample of accountants, the burnout condition is found to partially mediate the influence of role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload on satisfaction, performance, and turnover intentions. To some extent, burnout is capable of separating the functional and dysfunctional aspects of the role stressors on these job outcomes. In order to provide greater direction for future research, a separate treatment of each of the three dimensions of burnout is provided.