The Truth About Burnout: How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to Do About It [Anglais] [Relié]

This collaboration by Maslach (Career Burnout, Free Pr., 1989), creator of the eponymous Maslach Burnout Inventory, and Leiter, a psychologist and educator, has a telling subtitle. To wit: the organization shoulders the responsibility for the individual's inability to subsist and thrive in the workplace. Although readers might challenge this premise, the authors do a credible job of examining the dichotomy between the individual and the organizational value system. They cite six reasons for burnout?work overload, powerlessness, insufficient reward, system unfairness, breakdown of community, and value systems in conflict?and recommend a process-oriented engagement to advance both the individual and the organization. Similar approaches can be found in W. Edwards Demings's well-known "Fourteen Points" and Stephen R. Covey's books (e.g., First Things First, LJ 4/1/94). Recommended for business collections.?Steven Silkunas, DCO SEPTA/FRONTIER, Conshohocken, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As the original researcher who first identified and described burnout, Dr. Maslach now digs to the roots of alienation and loss of community in many large organizations.

Today's workforce is experiencing job burnout in epidemic proportions. Workers at all levels, both white- and blue-collar, feel stressed out, insecure, misunderstood, undervalued, and alienated at their workplace. This original and important book debunks the common myth that when workers suffer job burnout they are solely responsible for their fatigue, anger, and don't give a damn attitude. The book clearly shows where the accountability often belongs. . . .squarely on the shoulders of the organization.

Burnout has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. Based on an extensive study of burnout victims, this book exposes the current crisis and offers methods of prevention. After identifying the source of the problem, the authors offer specific prescriptive measures--for assessment, goal-setting, crisis intervention, and prevention of future burnout.

Challenges the accepted thinking about burnout and focuses on how to describe, predict, and alleviate this problem. Gives workers and managers guidelines and strategies for eradicating the underlying problems within an organization that are true source of burnout. DLC: Job stress.

Cary Cherniss, professor of applied psychology, Rutgers University says of The Truth About Burnout, " A welcome corrective to much of the writing I see on burnout. The authors show convincingly that the causes - and solutions - are to be found primarily in the organization, not the individual."

Todays workforce is experiencing job burnout in epidemic proportions. Workers at all levels, both white- and blue-collar, feel stressed out, insecure, misunderstood, undervalued, and alienated at their workplace. But what can be done to offset the devastating effects of organizational downsizing, outsourcing, and restructuring?
This original and important book debunks the common myth that when workers suffer job burnout they are solely responsible for their fatigue, anger, and "dont give a damn" attitude. The Truth About Burnout clearly shows where the accountability often belongs . . . squarely on the shoulders of the organization. Burnout is shown to be a sign of a major dysfunction within an organization, and says more about the workplace than it does about the employees.
Written by Drs. Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter—leaders in the study of job burnout—The Truth About Burnout challenges the accepted thinking about burnout and focuses on how to describe, predict, and alleviate this problem. The authors give workers, managers, and company leaders guidelines and strategies for eradicating the underlying problems within an organization that are the true source of burnout. They propose a new paradigm for organizational health and offer specific prescriptive measures. These measures—both for assessment, goal-setting, and techniques of crisis intervention, and for preventing burnout in the future—demand both collective initiative from employees and substantial cooperation from management.
The organizational change that is required will not only alleviate this problem--it also offers management the promise of greater profitability. For it is only engaged and committed employees who can remain functional and productive for the long run.

Christina Maslach is professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the creator of the widely used psychological test instrument The Maslach Burnout Inventory and the author of Burnout: The Cost of Caring(1982). Michael P. Leiter is dean of the faculty of pure and applied science and professor of psychology at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is also director of the Center for Organizational Research & Development.