Study On Causes And Countermeasures Of Scientific Researchers' Occupational Burnout

Scientific research activity is a kind of living social practice, mainly based on the participation of scientific researchers. As the subject of scientific practice, scientific researchers'creativity and passion are directly related to the development of science.In a book entitled as"occupational burnout", Xu Duanhai, who is the author of the book, proposes that the domestic scientific research staff are a high risk group of occupational burnout. In our view, scientific research works are very sacred and desirable. However, the fact tells us that they have the feeling of burnout. It is very important to know what lead to the occurrence of the burnout and how to eliminate them. So far,scientific researcher burnout is rarely studied by domestic scholars. The existing empirical studies are only limited to investigate the burnout among the staff in a specifc scientific research unit within a special period, and the theoretica studies are mainly carried out from the aspect of psychological factors. While deeper social causes of psychological changes have not been analyzed. In this thesis, based on the relationship between politics and science under the background of big science, we analyze the causes of the burnout among scientific researchers from the perspective of sociology, and offer corresponding strategies and methods to remove the burnout.Referring to Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and considering the characteristics of scientific researchers, we design a scientific researcher burnout inventory consisting of 22 survey items, and then use it to make a survey on the burnout level of 150 scientific researchers from a research institute and a university in Shijiazhang(142 questionaires are returned).The reliability coefficients, achieved by the statistical software SPASS 17.0 , show that the inventory and survey are reliable and stable. The mean scores along three dimensions of emotional exhaustion, alienation and self-efficacy demonstrate that a large number of scientific researchers have the feeling of job burnout with different levels. In order to seek the causes of the burnout, the author makes profound interviews with several scientific researchers on the basis of their consent, and deeply feel the helplessness and wandering of the front-line researchers by the interviews. Based on the interviews, the author proposes that the root cause of scientific researcher burnout is the asymmetry between scientific external and internal powers.The asymmetry can lead to inappropriate management, while the inappropriate tends to increase the level of multi-role conflict, therefore the directional cause of scientific researcher burnout is the occurrence of long-term and excessive pressure introduced by multi-role conflict. Firstly, in today's era of big science, the development of science is indeed inseparable from the politics, where the politics is defined as the operations of power including control and allocation of resources, and scientific research activities need to be planed, organized, harmonized and supported by politics. On the other hand, as a subsystem of society, scientific system has its own developing laws and operating modes. It is very necessary to offer a free space for the developmence of science when scientific system is regulated by politics. Otherwise excessive political intervention can result in variations and bureaucratismlized of scientific system, and the bureaucratismlized lead further to the appearance of many strange phenomena in scientific system, such as"governance of unprofessional people","governance of authorities"and"political rent-seeking". The bureaucratismlization of scientific system results also in the occurrence of materialization of scientific management, artificial and non-fair factors in scientific evaluation, and unfair distribution of scientific resources. The negative factors affect directly the creativity and passion of scientific researchers. So the asymmetry between scientific external and internal powers is the root cause of scientific researcher burnout. Secondly, scientific researchers shoulder greater social responsibilities, and need to do the corresponding works of multiple roles. This will bring about their physical and paychological pressures. Once they are under the pressures over a long period, and the pressures have not been effectively released, the burnout will be generated. So the long-term and excessive pressures introduced by multi-role conflict, lead directionally to the occurrence of burnout.Based on the above cause analysis, the author proposes that the basic strategies of avioding burnout are to maintain the necessary tension between plotical and scientific and eliminate the bureaucratismlized of scientific system. We should respect for scientific reaschers'creativities under the premise of the democratization of science, and implement human management.