Civil Servants’ Pressure Of Using Instant Messaging Software,Social Support On Burnout

Currently,instant messaging(IM)software is frequently used in people’s work and life.At the same time,growing problems such as overload,invasion,and privacy have made people feel mental fatigue.Up to now,numerous studies have showed that civil servants in China are under high incidence of burnout,but studies conducted between the use of IM and burnout of civil servants are still insufficient,and there is also a lack of research on the role of social support within.In addition,the existing literature has not yet formed a unified opinion on the mechanism of social support.Hence,despite confirming the pressure of using IM is a new source of burnout,this paper aimed at searching for new ideas for the reduction of burnout among civil servants via conducting a more granular study over social support theory as well.This paper took civil servants in a district of the Pearl River Delta as research objects(N=2029),surveying the status of the pressure of using IM software,social support,and burnout through questionnaires,then used SPSS software for data analysis.The results showed that(1)The dimensions of invasion and privacy in the pressure of using IM software are significantly positively correlated with burnout;(2)There is a significant negative relationship between all the dimensions of social support(coworker-provided emotional support,coworker-provided tool support,organization-provided emotional support,organization-provided tool support)and burnout;(3)The effect of overload on burnout is positively moderated by coworkerprovided emotional support.The higher the coworker-provided emotional support,the more likely the civil servants with higher overload will lead to burnout;(4)The effect of invasion on burnout is negatively moderated by organization-provided emotional support.The higher the organization-provided emotional support,the less likely the civil servants with higher invasion will lead to burnout;(5)The effect of privacy on burnout is positively moderated by organization-provided emotional support.The higher the organization-provided emotional support,the higher the privacy of civil servants,the more likely to lead to burnout.To sum up,the problem of burnout of civil servants can be alleviated in the following two ways: one is to reduce the negative influence of invasion and privacy in the pressure of using IM software,and the other is to improve the level of social support.It is worth noting that colleagues or organizations should provide civil servants in a state of burnout with proper type of social support that matches the main conflict of them.