Cynicism as Mediating Variable between Leadership Support and Emotional Burnout: Administrative Support Staff in Turkish Universities

Abstract

Studies in management and organization scholarship prefer to focus on personnel who constitute the core in institutions having bilateral employee status, academicians in the case of our research. Yet, organizational issues pertaining to administrative employees, as support personnel, seem understudied in the literature. Thus, in this study, we focus on issues experienced by administrative employees in Turkish universities. We have employed leader-member exchange theory as theoretical background, and conducted a field research through a questionnaire form to test the model. Organizational cynicism, emotional burnout and leadership support constitute the main dimensions of the research theme. We argue that leadership support affects emotional burnout through organizational cynicism. Analysis shows that administrative support personnel in universities suffer from emotional burnout, mainly sourcing from organizational cynicism on which leadership support is highly influential. Thus superiors in bilateral institutions are expected to support administrative employees to eliminate cynicism, otherwise they are in danger of emotional burnout.