Burnout And Work Engagement Among Employees Of State-owned Enterprise

Burnout and work engagement are two distinct mental states, which complement each other from positive and negative perspectives and can be seen as opposites of each other. Taking employees of FAW in Changchun as example, this paper tries to integrate burnout and work engagement, so that a"symbosis"model can be formed. There is no denying the fact that it is helpful to the prevention of burnout and the promotion of engagement. Combining the methods of social statistics, a series of theoretical and empirical researches on burnout and work engagement are conducted. The general contents are as follows:Part One delineates objects, contents and ideas of the case study from the angles of indigenous psychology, positive psychology and occupational health psychology respectively. The most representative factors, such as personality, work-family conflict and job content are proposed to be antecedents of burnout and work engagement. After that, theoretical and practical meanings are discoursed.Part Two investigates burnout and engagement from the aspect of theory. Conceptual evolvement, history, assessment, theoretical backgrounds and intervention of burnout are shown. Besides, the definition, distinction of engagement from relevant concepts, assessment and research trends of engagement are presented. The theoretical part not only reviews the literature on burnout and work engagement but also points out the defects of the present studies.Part Three describes demographic conditions of subjects, and the basic operational definitions are given. In addition, by taking use of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, Maslach Burnout Inventory and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale are revised, and moreover, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Work-Family Conflict Scale are introduced. Finally, collection and analysis of data are referred.Part Four conducts a series of empirical researches on burnout and work engagement. Two clues run through the entire case study, that is to say, from the micro point of view, the process of how personal factors, work-family factors and job-related factors affect specific dimensions of burnout and engagement are tested in detail on one hand, and from the macro point of view, the process of how personal factors, work-family factors and job-related factors influence overall reactions of burnout and engagement are investigated systematically on the other hand. It is necessary to emphasize that principle of"symbiosis"is highlighted throughout the study. The empirical part includes five small researches. Research One delineate the general situation of FAW employees'burnout and engagement and then uses MANOVA to discover differences found among different sex, seniority, marital status and position groups in levels of employees'burnout and engagement. Research Two investigates whether burnout and engagement could be differentiated on the basis of personality. Discriminant analyses are used to distinguish burned-out and engaged employees from their non-burned-out and non-engaged counterparts, respectively. Result shows that the discriminant model is effective. Research Three tries to find differences among different demographic groups in levels of work-family conflicts and differences of employees'burnout and engagement caused by work-family conflicts, at the same time, adopts the method of hierarchy regression to analyze how work-family conflicts affect work burnout and work engagement of FAW employees. Research Four shows that job contents are significantly correlated with burnout dimensions and engagement dimensions. The methods of hierarchy regression and strength analysis are used to indicate that the job contexts also have impacts on burnout and engagement of FAW employees. Research Five constructs an overall model to show the unique generating process of burnout and engagement under the collaborative effects of personality, work-family conflicts and job contents.Part Five gives some comments on selection of the title and contents of the case study, innovative views as well as defects and limitations of the study are pointed out. At last, assumptions of future research are presented.