Antecedents and Consequences of 'Burnout' in Services Personnel : A Case of Indian Software Professionals

Past studies reveal that services professionals experience high level of burnout, which has negative physical, emotional and interpersonal consequences. This study focuses on organizational politics and coordination expertise, which can cause burnout but have been ignored in the extant literature. Further, the relative influence of components of burnout on individual work performance is also investigated. This study is conducted in the context of Indian software services industry, which has provided high impetus to the Indian economy in a very short period of time through provision of manpower services. It is therefore important to study the factors, which influences the performance of individuals working in this industry. The proposed model is tested using structural equation modeling. Results suggests that software professional's perception of higher level of organizational politics has adverse influence on their burnout level, but a higher level of coordination expertise in teams, reduces burnout level. Although most of the hypotheses are supported, some of the hypotheses are found to be quite contradictory, which further raises some interesting research issues for future research. Finally, a number of implications based on these findings are discussed