Examining the role of cynicism in the relationships between burnout and employee behavior

The purpose of the study was to examine the relation of burnout components (i.e., exhaustion, cynicism, and professional inefficacy) with employees’ self-rated job performance and prosocial behavior and test a conceptual model that incorporates the direct and indirect relationships of the burnout components with job performance and prosocial behavior. A paper-and-pencil survey battery was completed by 262 working adults in a university setting. The independent and dependent variables were collected one month apart to reduce the likelihood of common method variance bias. Emotional exhaustion and professional inefficacy were associated with lower task and contextual performance, and prosocial behavior. Cynicism was a significant partial mediator of the emotional exhaustion and professional inefficacy relations with three outcome variables, linking to increased task performance, contextual performance, and prosocial behavior. This is one of the few studies that use the burnout process model to examine the links between burnout and performance and prosocial behavior. © 2017 Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Análisis del papel del cinismo en la relación entre el burnout y el comportamiento de los trabajadores