Imran Anwar, Naveed Yasin, Mohd Tariq Jamal, Muhammad Haroon Rashid and Imran Saleem
This study aims to investigate how work overload, resulting from full-time telecommuting, aggravates telecommuting accounting professionals’ burnout via the mediation of work…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how work overload, resulting from full-time telecommuting, aggravates telecommuting accounting professionals’ burnout via the mediation of work exhaustion. Further, the study also tests the conditional moderation effect of psychological capital on the association between work exhaustion and burnout, proposing that it becomes least severe for employees who perceive a high level of psychological capital.
Design/methodology/approach
The research was conducted using a sample of 322 employees from Big Four accounting firms, and the measurement model was established using confirmatory factor analysis. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and model-14 in the PROCESS Macro for SPSS.
Findings
The results confirmed that work overload directly and indirectly (via the mediation of work exhaustion) aggravates employees’ burnout. However, psychological capital negatively conditions the mediating effect of work exhaustion on burnout such that the aggravating effect of work overload on burnout, via the mediation of work exhaustion, gets least severe (insignificant) for those employees who perceive a high level of psychological capital.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature on work overload-induced “work exhaustion burnout” association and offers suggestions for implications.