How Does Psychological Empowerment Prevent Emotional Exhaustion? Psychological Safety and Organizational Embeddedness as Mediators

Hao Zhou,Jingyi Chen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.546687

Abstract

Emotional exhaustion in the workplace can cause employees psychological and physical health problems, affect work performance, and create burdens for the organization. Existing studies have demonstrated that psychological empowerment helps reduce emotional exhaustion. This study explores the internal mechanism of this relationship. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we advance a dual mediation model to explain how high psychological empowerment results in low emotional exhaustion, by increasing psychological safety and organizational embeddedness. Data were collected from 226 on-the-job MBA students at a university in western China. The results demonstrate that psychological safety and organizational embeddedness play mediating roles in the negative relationship between psychological empowerment and emotional exhaustion. The study provides a systematic view of the negative effect that psychological empowerment has on emotional exhaustion. The paper also discusses theoretical contributions, practical implications, and future directions.

Highlights

Burnout is an important emerging risk impacting career prospects and poses a major challenge for occupational safety and health in organizations (Ayala Calvo and García, 2018)
The results indicated that the effect of psychological empowerment on emotional exhaustion was mediated by psychological safety and organizational embeddedness
The results demonstrate that psychological empowerment, psychological safety, and organizational embeddedness act as important job resources to help reduce emotional exhaustion

Summary

Introduction

Burnout is an important emerging risk impacting career prospects and poses a major challenge for occupational safety and health in organizations (Ayala Calvo and García, 2018). Burnout is a comprehensive manifestation of emotional exhaustion, decreased personal accomplishment, and depersonalization (Maslach et al, 2001). Emotional exhaustion captures the key strain dimension of burnout and occurs when one is emotionally drained because of contact with others (Bakker et al, 2014). This includes the draining of personal resources, together with the feeling that one no longer has the ability to provide anything psychologically to others (Ayala Calvo and García, 2018). Cordes and Dougherty (1993) argued that the key determinants of emotional exhaustion reflect the demands that organizations and individuals place on employees. Emotional exhaustion is unlikely to occur when people have sufficient resources to cope with daily work demands

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