Influence of Organizational Role Stress and Personality Hardiness on Teachers’ Burnout

The present study investigates the influence of organizational role stress and personality hardiness on university teachers’ burnout. 300 teachers were randomly selected from one of the central universities in India and divided equally into three groups based on the university ranks (lecturer, reader and professor). Organizational role stress scale (ORS), Maslach burnout inventory (MBI), and personality hardiness scale were used to collect the data. The results indicate that organizational role stress is highly correlated with job burnout among all the three groups of teachers (lecturers, readers and professors). Lecturers have highest level of role stress as compared to other two counterparts and are found to be significantly different from readers and professors on demographic variables and their level of role stress and emotional exhaustion .Readers are found to be significantly different on role erosion, role overload, self-role distance, resource inadequacy and total ORS from professors but not found to be significantly different on the level of job burnout. Professors are found to have least amount of stress and burnout as compared to readers and lecturers. The groups were not found significantly different on hardiness. Hardiness dimensions are also found correlated with burnout dimensions. Commitment was found positively related with emotional exhaustion in all the groups, with depersonalization in lecturers and professors. Challenge was found positively related with emotional exhaustion in case of lecturers and professors. Control dimension of personality hardiness was found positively with emotional exhaustion in all the groups but negatively with personal accomplishment in groups of readers and professors.
Stepwise multiple regression analyses suggested that total ORS, role erosion, role overload, resource inadequacy,, role isolation, role ambiguity, commitment, control and challenge are common significant predictors of job burnout among these three groups.