INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL BURNOUT DEGREE ASSESSMENT AT HIGHER SCHOOL

Abstract

The article studies conceptual approaches to constructing modern systems of higher educational institutions effective management. Constructing such systems is caused by the trend in reforming public sector which higher education institute belongs to. Exceeding workload caused by higher school modernization has invoked a significant psychological and emotional stress of employees at different levels, which has led to certain deformations in their professional activities. Materials and methods. The analysis of modern trends in management development shows that, according to the theory of organizational justice, successful constructing and implementing effective management systems in higher education is determined by the social and psychological state of employees, by their level of professionalism, which excludes intellectual and emotional burnout of the teaching staff. The study hypothesizes that the state of universities’ organizational culture determines the corresponding level of professional (intellectual and emotional) burnout of the teaching staff, as far as the systemic phenomenon of organizational culture is a synergetic combination of employee relationships within the organization in the process of their joint activities and of their adaptive capacity to external influences. There is proposed a diagnostic scale of the individual characteristics of organizational justice. To assess the level of deviations associated with professional (intellectual and emotional) burnout of members of the university community, the article suggests using the difference of general cultural vectors related to the existing present and to the desired states of organizational culture. Diagnostics of organizational culture was made on K. Cameron and R. Quinn’s OСAI procedure. The empirical materials have been obtained within the framework of the investigation conducted in 2016–2018 among 386 respondents from 18 universities representing 12 regions of the Russian Federation. To compare and contrast these materials, the data of the similar research conducted in 2003 have been used. The results of the investigation. The activity of the considered expert and age groups is shown to be under significant influence of hierarchical (bureaucratic) organizational culture (at present state). At the same time, general cultural vectors of a desirable state of the considered groups’ organizational culture come to be within the field of clan (family) organizational culture. This result qualitatively causes objective conditions of university assemblage members’ professional (intellectual and emotional) burnout. The quantitative assessment of professional burnout level as the general cultural vectors difference, which concerns the existing present and desirable states of organizational university culture, shows, firstly, the growing dynamics of university workers’ professional burnout level of (throughout 2003–2018); secondly, the influence of the considered groups’ age over professional (intellectual and emotional) burnout degree. There are also outlined conditions preventing the construction of just, effective management systems in Russian higher education. Discussion and conclusion. The study originally considers the unintended impact of management systems, which are the objective reasons for university workers’ intellectual and emotional burnout. Neglecting the factor of intellectual and emotional teaching staff’s burnout is fraught with the loss of their professional identity, which, on its turn, will lead to a decrease in efficiency, degradation of higher education. The research materials can be practically useful for heads of universities as scientific and methodological recommendations for constructing and implementing fair systems of effective management, as well as enterprises and organizations of various profiles.