Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Knowledge Economy and Electronic Commerce

The Effects of Personal Characteristics, Stress Coping Styles, Job Selfefficacy on IT Professionals Burnout
Pei-Chen Liu and Huey-Wen Chou
Department of Information Management,
National Central University
Email: 93423016@cc.ncu.edu.tw and hwchou@mgt.ncu.edu.tw

Abstract
There is no denying that Information Technology (IT) plays a vital and critical role in
business operation nowadays. Hence, good IT professionals are important. Unfortunately, a
few problems, which may have impacts on the IT development and IT performance of
organizations, exist in IT professional labor market. These problems include insufficient
number of qualified professionals, too many inexperienced workers, and high turnover rate.
Literature (Lee and Ashforth, 1996; Moore, 2000) indicated that one of the
possible reasons leading to high IT professional turnover rate is IT professionals burnout. It
is widely acknowledged that IT career is very knowledge-intensive and IT professionals are
forced to acquire new knowledge quickly. Moreover, they need to have good interpersonal
skills to communicate with users. Those requirements which make IT professionals have to
work longer hours cause heavy stress. As a result, IT professionals may become burnout. This
study aims to find what factors can have impacts on IT professionals burnout and to offer
some managerial suggestions.
Snowball sampling is used to collect data in the present study. The results of multiple
hierarchy regression analyses showed that 218 IT professionals provides evidence that those
who have more positive coping style with stress and those who have higher job self-efficacy
and wont become burnout easily. In addition, people who have higher degree of extroversion
will have less diminished personal accomplishment. At the end of this paper, the research
limitations and managerial implications of this study will be discussed.
Keywords: IT professional, burnout, stress coping style, job self-efficacy, personality

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1. Instruction
1-1 Research Background
The trend of electronic business is so prosperous that the need for IT professionals
increases because IT plays an important role in business operation. Therefore, good IT
professionals are substantial. However, Chang and Li (2002) reported that a few problems,
which might have impacts on the IT development and IT performance of organizations, exist
in IT professional labor market. First, qualified professionals are not easy to obtain. Second,
too many IT people are not experienced and trained. Third, professional turnover rate is too
high. Fourth, the fast technology development pace makes it difficult for IT professionals to
adapt to.
It is widely acknowledged that IT career is so knowledge-intensive that IT professionals
have to acquire new knowledge quickly. Besides, they need to have good interpersonal skills
to communicate with users. Those requirements make IT professionals have to work longer
hours and then lead them to severe stress. After a long time, IT professionals may easily
become burnout. Lee et al. (1996) and Moore (2000) suggested that one of the possible
reasons resulting in high IT professional turnover rate is IT professionals burnout. As
mentioned above, qualified professionals are not easy to obtain. If turnover rate is high in an
organization, it will bring many kinds of turnover costs (as shown in Table 1-1). Therefore,
this study aims to investigate plausible variables that may have impacts on IT professionals
burnout, which in turn cause their turnover intention.
1-2 Research Scope and Goal
Sethi et al. (1997) studied how role conflict and role ambiguity influenced professional
employees burnout. Zohar (1997) mentioned that role overload and social support were the
causes of burnout. Maslach and Leiter (1997) claimed that client cooperation, coworker
support, and interpersonal conflict could influence the degree of burnout. Leiter (1990)
studied family support, skill utilization. Lee et al. (1996) focused on the relationship between
job demand, job support and burnout. These literatures offer ample theoretical background
for our study to form the research model which is used to deduce the impacts of personal
characteristics factor on professional burnout.
One of our study goals is to investigate whether personal characteristics, such as an IT
professionals stress coping styles and job self-efficacy, can influence the degree of burnout.
Another goal is to understand what factors will have moderating impacts on IT professionals
burnout-turnover intention relationship. The research questions are listed as follows:
(1) Whether personal characteristics, stress coping styles and job self-efficacy can affect
an IT professionals burnout.
(2) Will the organizational factors have moderating effects between an IT professionals
burnout and turnover intention?

2. Literature Review
2-1 Burnout
2.1.1 Definition of Burnout
The studies of burnout can be traced back to mid-1970s (Freudenberger, 1974). Cordes
and Dougherty (1993) claimed that it was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that
systematic empirical studies on burnout were conducted. Nowadays, the most commonly
accepted definition of burnout is three-component conceptualization proposed by Maslach
and Jackson (1981). The first component of burnout: emotional exhaustion, was characterized
by a shortage of energy and a feeling that ones emotional resources are exhausted. The

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second component of burnout: depersonalization, was marked by the treatment of clients as

objects rather than people. With depersonalization, workers might show indifferent and
emotional callousness, and they might be cynical toward colleagues, clients, and their
organizations. The third component of burnout: diminished personal accomplishment, was
featured by a tendency to assess oneself negatively. Most studies on burnout use the Maslach
Burnout Inventory (MBI) (Maslach, Leiter and Jackson, 1996), which was developed in
accordance with the above three components, to measure the degree of burnout of a person.
Actually, there has been a critical question that whether there is a sequence among the
three MBI components. Golembiewski et al. (1988) suggested that depersonalization arose
first and was followed by diminished personal accomplishment; emotional exhaustion was
the last aspect. However, Leitere and Maslach (1988) indicated that emotional exhaustion
was the trigger; then depersonalization and diminished personal accomplishment developed
sequentially. Lee and Ashforth (1993) and Cordes et al. (1997) also supported the viewpoint.
Finally, Leiter (1993) proposed a process model that emotional exhaustion would lead to
depersonalization, and diminished personal accomplishment would develop in parallel with
them rather than arise behind them because diminished personal accomplishment could be
caused by other work environment factors directly. The theory was empirically confirmed by
some longitudinal research (Lee and Ashforth, 1996; Maslach et al., 1996).
2.1.2 Causes and Effects of Burnout
Parasuraman and Alutto (1984) mentioned that differences in work environment, roleplaying, job content, post catalog, and demographics could result in burnout. On the other
hand, the effects of burnout contained low job performance, decreased organization
commitment, and increased turnover intention. Cordes and Dougherty (1993) found the
causes on burnout included job characteristics, role conflict, role ambiguity, demographics
(e.g., gender, age, wage, family condition, etc.), and frequent communication work. Burnout
would affect ones physiological and psychological state. Besides, burnout would affect ones
tendency toward turnover. Burke and Greenglass (1995) indicated the causes of burnout
included job overload, role conflict, role ambiguity, the extent of contact with users, and
leadership style. Burke and Greenglass also suggested that burnout would make ones health
condition and life quality worse, and would make ones marriage to an unsatisfied situation.
In addition, burnout employee would be often absent from work. Moore (2000) argued that
job overload, role conflict, role ambiguity, lack of satisfied salary and job autonomy would
cause one to become burnout. The effects of burnout would lower ones organization
commitment and enhance ones turnover intention. Huarng (2001) regarded job content as the
causes of burnout. Kickul and Posig (2001) claimed job ambiguity, job conflict and time
stress as the causes of burnout. Bler, Land, and Tatjana (2003) argued that whether one
would become burnout might depend on his or her personalities.
2-2 IT Professionals Burnout
2.2.1 Changes that IT professionals Face
According to Drucker (1993), the most basic economic resource in the post-capitalist
society is knowledge. In fact, IT career is quite knowledge-intensive. The more rapidly the IT
changes, the more knowledge workers have to update. The cause of many IT professionals
stress is that rapid speed of IT development often obliges them to keep pace with new IT
technology and knowledge as soon as possible (Igbaria, 1991). Straub (2001), Watson (2001),
and Gallivan (2004) also claimed that one of the difficulties confronting IT professionals was
to adapting to the speedy change. IT professionals not only have to cope with frequent IT
changes, but also have to implement a new generation of applications to support those
organizations they serve for. However, Benamati and Lederer (2001) found that information
system departments often didnt cope with fast changes in technology effectively. We

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propose that the requirement to learn new technology makes IT professionals often spend
additional time learning, and feel their work heavier and heavier.
Moreover, IT professionals job content changes, too. In the old days, IT professionals
work was mostly technology-oriented. But Bartol (1983) argued that contemporary IT
professionals had to be good at IT knowledge, different business domain knowledge, as well
as interpersonal skills. Another important change is the role-change for IT professionals. Now
they are not just programmers or system analyzers who work alone, but those who have to
own communicative competency to interact with other people to achieve their goal (Lin,
1994). That means an IT professional has to communicate with end users frequently to know
more clearly what function end users really need. In addition, they may have to know how to
negotiate with their managers to strive for time and money. Kirsch (1997) indicated that
development of information systems included technical process as well as social process
involving interaction with users from different organizational units. Wang (2006) also
claimed that the quality of interactions between users and IT professionals might result in
better project coordination and lead to greater success. Therefore, if IT professionals cant
communicate with other people well, their work might fail. As everybody knows, it takes a
lot of time to communicate well with people. Nevertheless, it is a pity that most IT
professionals are not skilled in dealing with interpersonal relationship (Su, 2000), so they
encounter a lot of problems when working with end users. In addition, Su and Farn (2000)
confirmed that interpersonal interaction would have a great impact on IT professionals
burnout. Thus, according to our discussion above, we conclude that being a technological
expert and being a good communicator at the same time bring much pressure to IT
professionals. All in all, these changes have influenced IT professionals greatly.
2.2.2 IT professionals Burnout
Bartol and Martin (1982) claimed that IT professionals were unceasingly asked to deal
with a great quantity of task in very short time. Job overload made IT professionals more and
more stressful. Li and Shani (1991) surveyed 109 IT professionals and found that job
overload was the primary cause of stress. Other causes of stress included role conflict and
role ambiguity. Sethi et al. (1999) used the MBI to measure the burnout degree of 312 IT
professionals. They found that there was a positive relationship between job ambiguity and
burnout. They also claimed the MBI was appropriate to measure the burnout degree of IT
professionals. Moore (2000) argued changes in technology as the second most common
source of job stress and burnout among IT professionals. He indicated that rapid IT changes
were one cause of IT professionals burnout, and it would lead to their turnover intention.
Huarng (2001) used the MBI to investigate 522 IT professionals and found that the highest
degree of burnout occurred in the IT personnel who had to interact with other people. These
IT professionals also had a feeling of low personal accomplishment.
2.3 Personality
Brill (1984) claimed that burnout was the result of prolonged stress. Etzion (1987) argued
that burnout was a latent process of psychological erosion which results from prolonged
exposure to stress. Researches also confirmed that stress was related to personality (Owaied,
2001; Bernardi, 2001). Personality is ones set of characteristics, attributes, and properties.
The set makes one different from others. In addition, ones personality is special and
permanent (Guilford, 1959). Because McCrae and Costa (1986) confirmed that Big Five
Model was wildly used to examine a persons personality, we use a dimension of Big Five
Model, extroversion, to examine whether personality has direct impact on burnout.
2.3.1 Extraversion
Arnold et al. (2006) claimed that extraversion was featured by a tendency to be self-

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confident, active, and excitement seeking. Extraverts showed positive emotions, higher
intensity and frequency of personal interactions, and a higher need for stimulation. McCrae
and Costa (1992) indicated that an extraverted person was confident, conversational, active
and willing to make friends. Accordingly, we suggest that IT professionals will not get
burnout easily if they can communicate well with customers, users or bosses. Therefore, we
propose that if ones extraversion degree is high, one wont get burnout easily.
H1. The more extroverted the IT professional is, he/she will be less inclined to burnout.
2.4 Stress Coping Style
Brill (1984) and Etzion (1987) both regard burnout as a state and treat stress as its
ancestor. In other words, if one experiences stress over time without relief, one inclines to be
burnout. Consequently, one would be less inclined to burnout if he/she has more positive
coping behaviors with stress. The Occupational Stress Indicator (OSI), designed by Cooper,
Sloan and Willians (1988), was a popular instrument for the diagnosis of stress, stress-related
personality and outcome variables. However, some sub-scales in OSI were suffering from
low reliability and were therefore not wildly used. To improve it, Cooper et al. (2000)
developed new sub-scales. Among them, Coping Styles concerned with methods of dealing
with stress. It included four sub-dimensions: social support, denial, active positive attitude
and compensating behavior. Seeking social support and taking active positive attitude were
positive behaviors, whereas denial and compensating behavior were negative ones. We
propose that if one can cope with stress by more positive behaviors and less negative
behaviors, he/she will not become burnout easily.
H2. The stress coping style will have negative relationship with burnout.
2.5 Job Self-efficacy
Bandura (1997) defined self-efficacy as peoples beliefs in their capabilities to organize
and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances. Moreover,
researches suggested that there was a positive relationship between self-efficacy and workrelated performance, such as managerial decision-making and coping with stressful events
(e.g., Stumpf, Brief, and Hartman,1987). Maurer (2001) indicated that self-efficacy for
development and learning was ones confidence in studying new or developing skills;
whereas self-efficacy for performance was ones confidence in successfully executing a task.
For the past years, some researchers utilized the self-efficacy theory to explain the burnout
phenomenon and confirmed the negative relationship between self-efficacy and burnout
(Cherniss, 1993; Hallsten,1993; Hobfoll and Freedy, 1993). They claimed that people with
less self-efficacy became burnout easily and lacked the capabilities of adaptation.
Maurer (2001) suggested that there were three kinds of self-efficacy: general self-efficacy,
task specific self-efficacy, and domain self-efficacy. General self-efficacy referred to
individuals beliefs about their overall sense of competence (Eden and Kinnar, 1991). Task
specific self-efficacy, the most widely studied type of efficacy (Perrew and Spector, 2002),
contained individuals beliefs concerning their abilities within a specific task. Finally,
domain-specific efficacy is beliefs of the ability to perform the general functions associated
with a given situation (Perrew and Spector, 2002). In the present study, we adopt the
concept of domain self-efficacy to define job self-efficacy: individuals subjective beliefs
regarding their ability to successfully perform their jobs. Thus, we propose that people would
not become burnout easily if they believed they had higher job self-efficacy.

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H3. People with higher job self-efficacy will be less inclined to burnout.
2.5 Turnover intention
Longenecker and Scazzero (2003) suggested that with higher degree of burnout, an IT
professional had higher turnover intention. Therefore, we attempted to find what factors
could make a burnout IT professional choose to stay instead of leaving.
Igbaria and Greenhaus (1992) found that employees with low salaries and those who
perceived limited career advancement opportunities tended to hold stronger turnover
intention than those with higher salaries and more career advancement opportunities.
Furthermore, organizational climate (Gormley, 2005) and competent coworkers (Igbaria and
Siegel, 1992) could have impacts on the turnover intention of information systems personnel.
Hence, we propose that although an IT professional has higher degree of burnout, he/she
prefers to stay because of better benefits or good organization climate.
H4. The benefits, such as salary, welfare, promotion, learning opportunities, and career
advancement will moderate the burnout-turnover intention relationship.
H5. The organizational climate will moderate the burnout-turnover intention relationship.

3. Research Methodology
3-1 Research Model
The theoretical discussions in previous section led us to propose our research model (as
shown in Figure 1). Four personal factors, including extraversion, stress coping style, and job
self-efficacy, were hypothesized to be negatively related to burnout. Burnout consisted of
three sub-dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal
accomplishment. Benefits and organizational climate were proposed to moderate the
influence of burnout on turnover relationship. That means when IT professionals feel burnout
and inclined to leave, they would chose to stay due to satisfying benefits or organizational
climate.
3-2 Samples
The data collection procedure of snowball sampling was as follows: (1) Contacted with
IT professionals studying in a schools EMBA program and invited them to fill in the
questionnaire, (2) asked them to locate other IT professionals among their colleagues and
friends to fill in the questionnaire. We provided two types of questionnaire: paper-based and
electronic-based. Of 223 IT professionals, 121 chose electronic format and 102 chose paper
format. Among all questionnaires returned, 218 questionnaires were valid.
Personal Factors
Extraversion
Coping Styles
Job Self-efficacy

H1
H2

H3

Burnout
z Emotional Exhaustion
z Depersonalization
z Diminished Personal
Accomplishment

Figure 1. Research model

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Benefits
H4
H5

Organizational
Climate

Turnover
Intention

Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Knowledge Economy and Electronic Commerce

3-3 Measurements
The questionnaire included six sections. The first section measures individuals
extraversion (19 items) The scale is adapted from Chinag (2001), and is based on the Big
Five Model (McCrae and Costa, 1986). Each item is scored by using a 7-point Likert-type
scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). Examples of the 29 items
included: I am a person with leadership.
The second section is the MBI (Maslach, Jackson and Leiter, 1996), the most wildly used
measurement to measure the degree of burnout. Maslach (1996) established the
categorization of MBI Scores as shown in Table 1. MBI includes three sub-scales: emotional
exhaustion (9 items), depersonalization (5 items) and diminished personal accomplishment (8
items). Emotional exhaustion sub-scale measures individuals feelings of being emotionally
exhausted by work (e.g. I feel emotionally drained from my work.) Depersonalization subscale measures if individuals response toward recipients unfeelingly and impersonally (e.g. I
have become more callous toward people since I took this job.) For the parts of emotional
exhaustion and depersonalization, high scores correspond to higher degrees of emotional
exhaustion and depersonalization. Personal accomplishment measures individuals feelings of
successful achievement and competence (e.g. I think I accomplish many valuable things
through my work.). Lower score of personal accomplishment correspond to higher degree of
personal accomplishment. To avoid confusion when computing scores (Kahill, 1988), we
reverse the score of diminished personal accomplishment to make the relationship among
three-subscales positive. Every item is scored on a frequency scale, ranging from 0 (Never) to
6 (every day). By using reversed score of diminished personal accomplishment, we can sum
up the scores of the three parts. The total-score expresses the degree of an IT professionals
burnout, with the higher score representing higher degree burnout.
Table 1. Categorization of MBI scores
MBI
Low
Average
Emotional Exhaustion
Depersonalization
Diminished Personal Accomplishment

<16
<6
>39

17-26
7-12
38-32

High
>27
>13
<31

The third section measures an IT professionals job self-efficacy. Each item is scored by
a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from strongly inadequate (1) to strongly adequate (7).
The 4-item scale consisting four items (e.g. To which extent do you think of that you are
capable of keeping learning new and professional technology.) is self-developed.
The fourth part measures individuals stress coping style by Coping Styles scale (Cooper
et al. ,2000). There are four sub-scales, including social support (6 items), active positive
attitude (6 items), denial (7 items), and compensating behavior (6 items). Each item is scored
by a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7).
Examples of each sub-scale include: I ask people who have had the same problem as I what
they have done to solve it.; In times of stress I try to think of the nice elements of my
work.; When there are difficulties, I pretend that everything is OK.; I notice that I drink
more alcohol when I have problems. The score of stress coping style is obtained by
computing the differences between the sum of social support and active positive attitude and
the sum of denial and compensating behavior.
The fifth section is composed of organizational climate scale and benefit scale. The
organizational climate scale includes 6 items. A 5-item measure is adapted from Smith, Hulin
and Kendalls (1969) Job Description Index (JDI). Each item (e.g. I think that my colleagues
are helpful.) is scored by a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree (1)

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to strongly agree (7). One self-developed item is added to measure to which extent you are
satisfied with the climate between your colleagues, a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging
from strongly unsatisfied (1) to strongly satisfied (7). Another 3 self-developed items are
employed to measure an IT professionals satisfaction with his/her benefits (e.g. According
to my job load, how I feel about my salary and bonus.) Each item is scored by a seven-point
Likert-type scale ranging from strongly unsatisfied (1) to strongly satisfied (7).
The final section includes demographic questions, such as gender, age, marriage status.
The turnover intention item is measured by one item which asks how long the respondent is
inclined to stay. The item includes five levels: less than six months, less than one year, from
two years to three years, form four years to fives years, and over five years.

4. Data Analysis and Result Discussion

4-1 Description of Samples
The sample demographics are shown in Table 2, including gender, marriage status,
dependents, age, and education.
Table 2.

Description of samples (n=218)

Personal
Background
Gender
Marriage status
Number of
Dependents

Age
Education
Turnover intention
(year)

Company type
(Industry)

Position

Job description
(Multiple choices)

Type / Number (%)

(1) Male / 144 (66.1 %)
(2) Female / 74 (33.9 %)
(1) Married / 66 (30.3 %)
(2) Single / 152 (69.7 %)
(1) 0~1 / 141 (65.1 %)
(3) 4~5 / 8 (3.7 %)
(2) 2~3 / 66 (30.3 %)
(4) > 6 / 2 (0.9 %)
(1) 21~30 / 19 (54.6 %)
(3) 41~50 / 10 (4.5 %)
(2) 31~40 / 88 (40.4 %) (4) 51~60 / 1 (0.5 %)
(1) Vocational school / 21 (9.6 %)
(2) University or college / 18 (54.2 %)
(3) Graduate school / 79 (36.2 %)
(1) < 0.5 / 24 (11.0 %)
(4) 4~5 / 21 (9.6 %)
(2) 0.5~1 / 58 (26.6 %)
(5) > 5 / 46 (21.1 %)
(3) 2~3 / 69 (31.7 %)
(1) Food / 2 (0.9 %)
(6) Financial / 47 (21.6 %)
(2) Textile / 2 (0.9 %)
(7) Tourism / 1 (0.5 %)
(3) EE business / 1 (0.5 %)
(8) Retail / 1 (0.5 %)
(4) Transportation / 6 (2.8 %) (9) Government / 13 (6.0 %)
(5) IT / 134 (61.5 %)
(10) Others / 11 (5.0 %)
(1) IT dept. Chief / 7 (3.2 %)
(4) Non-IT dept. Supervisor / 2 (0.9 %)
(2) IT dept. Supervisor / 18 (8.3 %) (5) Non-IT dept. clerk / 8 (3.7 %)
(3) IT dept. Clerk / 182 (83.9 %)
(6) Others / 1 (0.5 %)
(1) SA / 64
(8) Service / 18
(2) SD / 69
(9) Phone service / 15
(3) Programming / 108
(10) Technique support / 31
(4) System testing / 39
(11) Project management / 40
(5) System maintaining / 95 (12) Administration / 17
(6) Consultant / 14
(13) Outsourcing / 2
(7) Sales / 2
(14) Others / 4

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4-2 Reliability and Validity

The instruments reliability in this study was examined by Cronbach. Nunnally (1967)
considered that the instrument could be accepted when Cronbach equaled or over 0.7.
Moreover, discriminant validity was checked by means of factor analysis (Kerlinger, 1986).
First of all, we used principal component analysis to extract factor, and then used Varimax as
orthogonal rotation to get items factor loading value, which was suggested to be greater than
0.5 (Kaiser, 1958). Therefore, 17 items was deleted. Finally, we compute the Average
Variance Extracted value (AVE) and Composite Reliability value (CR). Hair et al. (1992)
argued the AVE could be accepted when they were above 0.5. Joreskog and Sobom (1989)
claimed that CR had to be grater than 0.7. Table 3 illustrates the CR value, AVE value and
Cronbach. Totally, our results pass all aforementioned criterions.
Table 3. Reliabilities and discriminant calidity (CN: Construct Number)
CN
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
CR
AVE

a
mean

a.
b.
c.

1
.80
.18
.54
-.18
-.04
.37
.32
-.12
-.08
-.42
.09
.72
.65
.94

10

.83
.44
-.29
-.13
.67
-.05
-.12
-.10
-.12
.20
.75
.69
.80

.73
-.21
-.14
.69
.26
-.33
-.22
-.42
.38
.64
.53
.88

.74
.49
-.75
.08
.33
.41
.14
-.08
.62
.55
.86

.77
-.60
.08
.26
.31
.10
-.01
.69
.59
.72

.97
.04
-.39
-.39
-.30
.26
.95
.94
.93

.75
-.04
-.02
-.32
.12
.63
.57
.89

.69
.52
.06
-.17
.57
.48
.79

.75
-.05
-.10
.66
.56
.83

.86
-.20
.79
.74
.67

11

.87
.80
.76
.85

88.91 27.85 24.51 13.38

7.02
8.85 20.11
7.06 15.10
7.91 25.89
Std.
15.49
4.10
5.13
5.26
3.60
2.63
8.78
5.51
7.55
2.51
5.09
Diagonal elements in the correlation of constructs matrix are the square root of AVE. For adequate
discriminant validity, diagonal elements should be greater than corresponding off-diagonal elements.
**: 0.01 level (2-tailed). *: 0.05 level (2 tailed).
1: Extroversion 2: Social Support, 3: Active Positive Attitude, 4: Denial,
5: Compensating Behavior, 6:
Self Efficacy, 7: Emotion Exhaustion, 8: Depersonalization, 9: Diminished Personal Accomplishment, 10:
Benefits, 11: Organizational Climate.

4-2 Variables Descriptive Statistics

Table 4 summaries all variables descriptive statistics. In regard to burnout, we reset the
classification because we reversed the score of diminished personal accomplishment and
deleted items with factor loading value less than 0.5. Table 5 shows the classification of
burnout of our samples. There are several findings: (1) 77.1% IT professionals feel moderate
to heavy emotional exhausted; (2) 60.1% IT professionals feel greatly depersonalized; (3)
83.94% IT professionals feel diminished in personal accomplishment.
Table 4.
Variables (Number of Items)
Extroversion (15)
Stress Coping Style (18)
Job Self-efficacy (4)
Emotional Exhaustion (7)
Depersonalization (4)

Variables descriptive statistics

Mean
Std.
69.01
12.21
31.94
12.39
18.12
4.85
20.11
8.78
7.06
5.51

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Min
14
-9
4
0
0

Max
95
61
28
39
21

Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Knowledge Economy and Electronic Commerce

Diminished Personal Accomplishment (7)

Burnout (18)
Benefits (3)
Organizational Climate (5)

15.10
42.27
12.23
25.89

7.55
14.80
3.56
5.09

Table 5. Classification of burnout a

Level of Experienced Burnout
Frequency
Emotional Exhaustion
High (score >= 21)
Moderate (score 13-20)
Low (score <= 12)
Depersonalization
High (score >= 10)
Moderate (score 5-9)
Low (score <= 4)
Diminished Personal Accomplishment
High (score >= 15)
Moderate (score 9-14)
Low (score <= 8)
a.

0
0
3
5

Mean
20.11
27.47
16.70
8.1
7.06
13.59
7.09
1.57
15.10
21.56
11.32
5.6

109
59
50
58
73
87
100
83
35

38
84
21
35

Percentage
50.0 %
27.1:%
22.9 %
26.6 %
33.5 %
39.9 %
45.87%
38.07 %
16.05 %

The original division score multiplied by the ratio of present item numbers to original item numbers
is the new division score.

4-3 Regression
4-3-1 Personal Factors
Multiple hierarchy regression technique was used to test the hypotheses. The method in
regression model is enter method. Independent variables were extroversion, stress coping
style, and job self-efficacy. First, we built model 1 with burnout as the dependent variable to
test and verify the four hypotheses. The results showed stress coping style (= -0.497,
p<0.001) and job self-efficacy (= -0.155, p<0.05) were significant. Hence, H2 and H3 were
supported. Then, in order to know the relationships between personal factors and three subdimensions of burnout, model 2 to model 4 were also conducted by multiple hierarchy
regression. In model 2, we found stress coping style (= -0.411, p<0.001) had significant
effect on emotional exhaustion. In model 3, stress coping style (= -0.419, p<0.001) also had
very significant effect on depersonalization. In model 4, extroversion (= -0.251, p<0.05),
stress coping style (= -0.155, p<0.05), and job self-efficacy (= -0.210, p<0.05) all had
significant effects on diminished personal accomplishment. Therefore, H1 was partially
supported. To sum up, model 1 has the strongest explanatory power (F=33.322, p<0.001).
The first two best predictors for burnout are stress coping style and job self-efficacy. Table 6
to Table 9 summaries all results.
Table 6. Multiple regression for Burnout a
Model

Sig.
t
-.077
Extroversion
-1.202
.223
Stress Coping Style

-.497

-8.124

.000***

Job Self-efficacy

-.155

-2.620

.009**

Dependent variable: Burnout (F= 33.322, p=.000, Adj-R =.309 )

* p<0.1 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.001
2

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Table 7. Multiple regression for emotional exhaustion a

Model

Sig.
t
Extroversion

.049

-.692

Stress Coping Style

-.411

-6.035

Job Self-efficacy

-.430

-.647

.842
.000***
.214

Dependent variable: Emotional exhaustion (F= 13.342, p=.000, Adj-R2 =.146 )

* p<0.1 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.001

Table 8.

Multiple regression for depersonalization a

Model

Sig.

.085

1.195

.233

Stress Coping Style

-.419

-6.157

.000***

Job Self-efficacy

-.031

-.464

Extroversion

.643

Dependent variable: Depersonalization (F=13.214, p=.000, Adj-R =.144 )

* p<0.1 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.001
2

Table 9. Multiple regression for diminished personal accomplishment a

Model

Sig.

Extroversion

-0.270

-4.007

.000***

Stress Coping Style

-0.191

-2.958

.003**

Job Self-efficacy

-0.232

-3.723

.000***

Dependent variable: Diminished personal accomplishment (F= 22.804, p=.000, Adj-R2 =.232 )
* p<0.1 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.001

4-3-2 Turnover Intention

In the present study, turnover intention is measured by how long IT professionals will
stay. To confirm whether burnout turnover intention is positively related, we used simple
regression. As Table 10 shows, an IT professional with higher degree of burnout would not
stay long (= -0.218, p<0.01***). After analyzing the relationship between each subdimension of burnout and turnover intention, we found that emotional exhaustion (= -0.177,
p<0.01***) and diminished personal accomplishment (= -0.137, p<0.05**) would influence
ones turnover intention.
Table 10. Regression Turnover Intention on Burnout
Independent variables

t
Sig.
F
Burnout

-0.218

Emotional Exhaustion

-0.177

Depersonalization
Diminished Personal Accomplishment

.001**

10.732***

-2.648

.009**

7.011***

-1.115

-1.696

.091

2.877

-0.137

-2.026

.044**

4.106**

* p<0.1 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.001

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4-3-3 Moderating Effects

The results by multiple hierarchy regression technique with enter method show that
these moderators did not have significant effect on burnout-turnover intention, but had direct
effects on turnover intention instead. Table 11 and Table 12 suggest that the plausible
moderating effect of benefits and organizational climate are not significant. Therefore, H5
and H6 were not supported. The insignificant effects of benefits and organizational climate
indicate that burnout-turnover intention will not change due to different degree of benefits
and organizational climate.
Table 11. The moderating effects of benefits on burnout-turnover intention a
Model

Sig.
t
X1 : Burnout

-.118

-1.768

.079*

X2 : Benefits

.342

5.122

.000***

.051

.792

.429

X1* X2 (interaction)
a

F= 12.747, p=.000, R =.152

* p<0.1 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.001

Table 12. The moderating effects of organizational climate on burnout-turnover intention a

Model

Sig.
t
X1 : Burnout

-.158

-2.264

.025**

X2 : Organizational climate

0.179

2.599

.010**

X1* X2 (interaction)

-.032

-.477

.634

F= 5.971, p=.000, R2 =.107

* p<0.1 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.001

4-4 Discussion
There are several noteworthy findings according to the statistical results. We can
conclude that individuals stress coping style is a very critical predictor of burnout. If an IT
professional can deal with stress by more positive ways, he/she wont get burnout easily.
Etzion (1987) argued that burnout was a lasting process of psychological erosion resulting
form prolonged exposure to stress. Our study proves the importance of the stress coping style.
Moreover, we find that individuals perception of job self-efficacy, ones beliefs in
capabilities of organizing and executing courses of action required to attain designated types
of performances, is another important predictor. On the other hand, this study only partially
supported the notion that personality is a significant determinant of burnout. We have a
plausible explanation about these results. That is, if IT professionals have to conduct heavy
communication successively to complete a task, they would feel exhausted and
depersonalized, even though they are extroverted (Deary et al., 2003; Su and Fang, 2000).
However, extroversion also can be a predictor, as it has a negative effect on diminished
personal accomplishment, a sub-dimension of burnout. As for benefits and organizational
climate, we found that they both have direct effects on burnout. It means an IT professional
would chooses to quit when he/she is not satisfied with the benefits or organizational climate.

5. Conclusion
This study aims to find out what plausible factors have impacts on IT professionals
burnout, which in turn cause their turnover intention. According to our results, we conclude
that stress coping style is a very important predictor of burnout and the second significant
predictor of burnout is job self-efficacy. We also confirm that an extrovert would felt less

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diminished in personal accomplishment. As for two moderators, they did not have significant
effects but did demonstrate direct effects on turnover intention.
5-1 Managerial Implication
As an old saying goes, An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Although
the problem of burnout is impossible to be eliminated entirely, organizations still need to
endeavor to keep from the emergence of burnout.
For organizations, firstly, we suggest that managers should understand what kind of
personality characteristic a job applicant carries with. A right person can save many costs for
organizations. We believe that a competent IT professional should be able to deal with stress
more actively, has stronger job self-efficacy, and does not fear to communicate with other
people. Therefore, organizations had better develop reliable and valid measures on these
personality characteristics for recruiting process.
Secondly, organizations also have to care for IT professionals to help them better manage
stress. Managers should encourage or ask IT professionals to take a vocation after completing
a difficulty task. Furthermore, organizations should offer some psychology courses or
counseling courses which can release work related stress. Training classes may also enhance
IT professionals communication skills. If they learn how to communicate with users and
supervisors in better and effective ways, they will be capable of increasing their productivity
and of alleviating weighty stress.
Thirdly, organizations had better investigate the degree of IT professionals burnout
periodically. When an IT professional is inclined to burnout, organizations can provide some
advanced psychology courses or counseling courses or work alternatives, such as job rotation,
job enrichment, or continuing education. After organizations carry out some programs in
order to decrease burnout, they can compare the degree of IT professionals burnout to assess
those programs.
There are other suggestions of lowering turnover intention. Organizations can design
better salary base to retain good IT professionals. Since IT career is very knowledge-intensive,
it is fairly reasonable to pay for the skills, knowledge, and competencies. Therefore,
competence-based pay system should be adopted. Furthermore, organizations can urge IT
professionals to interact with each other frequently. For example, to form some learning
groups or entertainment clubs. Better interaction can enhance the degree of the satisfaction of
colleague relationship, so it can lower turnover intention.
5-2 Academic Implication
Due to the limited time and resources, we used snowball sampling to collect data, which
comes from IT and financial industries, so the generalizability of our results is limited in the
two industries. This limitation suggests direction for future research. Additionally, it is
interesting to investigate other plausible moderators which have moderating effects between
burnout and turnover intention. We also suggest that there should be a burnout measurement
special for IT professionals in the future.

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