Social Ecology at Work: Relational Mobility Buffers Employees From Job Burnout

Abstract

Drawing on and integrating theory in occupational health and socio-ecological psychology, we propose that relational mobility (i.e., the degree of freedom and opportunity in an organization to establish new relationships and end old ones) can mitigate employees’ job burnout. High relational mobility workplaces provide employees with the ability to exercise choice, access resources via flexible connections, and form desirable relationships at work. This way, relational mobility at the workplace should nurture employees’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which, according to self-determination theory, are the essential components of self-determined motivation. As a result, we argue that self-determined motivation mediates the negative effect of relational mobility on job burnout. However, working in a relationally immobile context is not aversive when everyone gets along. Therefore, we also predicted that the effect of relational mobility on self-determined motivation becomes more pronounced as perceived relationship quality decreases. The results of four studies (N = 1,018), correlational and experimental, conducted in three countries (Spain, the UK, and the US) in different contexts (an IT consulting firm, university, and general working population) supported our predictions. We introduce relational mobility to the management literature and discuss implications for theory and practice.