Impact of Organizational Role Stressors on Faculty Stress & Burnout

Many studies on stress point out that the role stressors may vary in different environments and lead to stress & burnout. The recent growth in higher education institutions in developing countries has lead to higher competition and organizational change in most of the public and private sector universities (Rajarajeswari 2010) and faculty members increasingly suffer from pressures leading to stress and burnout. Based on Pareek’s (2002) Organizational Role Stressors questionnaire and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach and Jackson, 1986), this exploratory research investigates the contribution of various role stressors to stress and burnout in a public sector university of Pakistan. A sample of 80 faculty members from a university in Pakistan completed a structured questionnaire. Results show that role ambiguity is one of the organizational role stressors having the biggest impact on two dimensions of stress and one dimension of burnout among the faculty. The other significant organizational role stressors include role stagnation, inter-role distance, self role distance, resource inadequacy, role conflict and role overload. Demographic factors such as gender, marital status and experience had little or no impact on the results. The results confirm the link between stress and some dimensions of burnout, but lack of personal accomplishment among faculty members was not related significantly to any dimension of stress.