The Grid of Burnout, Engagement and Job Satisfaction: a Case Study in Greece

Abstract

Work engagement’s relation with burnout intensively concerns the research community. A plethora of works has tried to interpret the kind of correlation of the above structures with reference to their structural elements and phenomena deriving from their common causal network. Therefore, in this research, the correlation between work engagement and burnout is investigated via their main structural elements and on the basis of job satisfaction’s interpretive role. For this purpose, the responses of 561 employees from various economic sectors in Greece, were analyzed using path analysis after the data had first been approached via item response theory. Job satisfaction’s interpretive role appeared to be of importance in regards to the positive sign of the correlation between work engagement and burnout as emerged in this work. The intrinsic job satisfaction’s positive effect on both constructs that is burnout and work engagement, also arose as a research outcome, while the extrinsic job satisfaction appeared to operate positively to work engagement and negatively to burnout, regulating in this way the overall correlation exerted, therefore giving rise to theoretical and practical implications.