Job Characteristics and Burnout: The Role of Self-Efficacy Among the Tunisian Police Officers

Using the Job Demands-Resources Model as a theoretical framing, the paper aims to investigate the association between job characteristics and burnout of the Tunisian police officers, taking the potential moderating role of self-efficacy as a key individual resource. To ensure more parsimonious research, we conducted a pilot study as a preliminary step in order to identify job characteristics that are specific to police work in the Tunisian context (Delphi technique). To test our research hypotheses, we carried out a confirmatory quantitative study using data from a sample of 245 Tunisian police officers using Structural Equations Modeling. Contrary to the common assumption, the results indicated that police officers are more sensitive to the job resources than to the job demands. More importantly, burnout seems to be a matter of job characteristics (social phenomenon) rather than an individual issue. This study offers a better understanding of the burnout phenomenon among police officers in an African country and especially in the post-revolutionary Tunisian context.