Burnout does not occur on account of stress or anxiety. It occurs on account of subjects being made to feel guilty about not being exceptional human beings. Unfortunately, most employees have been converted into brands in today’s organizations. This is especially true of employees who produce some amount of knowledge independent of others within the organization. Brands are supposed to delight customers. This desire to delight customers leads to employees always looking for opportunities to appear extraordinary creating circumstances where failure cannot be accepted in ordinary terms. The inability to accept failure leads to the production of guilt. Organizations have the cunning to situate one actor against the other. Stakeholders express dissatisfaction with respect to each other when they are mobilized as buyers and sellers. Thus, organizations produce guilt when employees feel inadequate in dealing with stakeholders. Work which has not been performed, effort which has not been put in begins to haunt employees as vengeful ghosts. The sense of being tormented, of being torn apart begins to grow in the employee. There is nobody who the employee can walk up to. There is a fear of appearing inadequate. The sense of guilt multiplies and there appears to be no escape for the employee.
The anxieties are that of a super hero. The problems appear insurmountable and the self doubts and dilemmas are too many. Am I good enough to deliver, am I putting in the required amount of effort, is the other chap stronger than me? For the super hero, everyone else is weak and the other chap is evil incarnate. The world has to be saved from evil and only the super hero can save the world. What is the price that the superhero will pay, what are the sacrifices? Love goes out of the window, respite has no place. The superhero is the star of society. But if stars are burning to illuminate our universe, then won’t they eventually get burnt out? The dilemma between excellence and quantity plays a vital role in creating the sense of burnout. Absence of social spaces where we can openly, freely, poetically, cheerfully discuss our inadequacy and failure intensifies burnout.
Proposition 1: So long as the superhero legend permeates human action, the human subject is always in the danger of falling off the cliff of burnout.
According to Cole, Walter, Bedeian and O’Boyle (2012), burnout and employee engagement cannot be seen as two different constructs. According to Hobfoll and Shirom (2000), burnout is a job strain emanating from accumulated work related stress. But rather than being seen as an outcome of job strain, can burnout be seen as the conversion of the organization into a failure-averse organization? There are several examples of failure-averse organizations. Take for instance, the mafia. The mafia does not like failure as its threats of deploying violence would otherwise become insignificant. When the organizational discourse shifts from achieving success to avoiding failure, burnout is inevitable, for failure is inevitable in the market place, as inevitable as success. Thus, Gabbar Singh kills 3 of his men because they have failed. Failure is seen as being unacceptable in contemporary organized life. The reality is unmistakable. There are too many Gabbar Singhs out there in organized life pretending to be managers. Or is the reality something else are there too many managers pretending to be Gabbar Singh? Under any circumstance, Gabbar Singh offers interesting solutions to managerial problems of agency theory moral hazard and adverse selection. Eliminate the hazard and adversity if the agent does not represent the principal’s interests. What sort of a society are we creating and what is the darker side of the superhero syndrome? The superhero is a weak and vulnerable and shameful character who lives in the fear of failure rather than with an imagination of success.
Proposition 2: Organizations today are more obsessed about failure than about success. This is the cause of burnout.
According to Halbesleben (2006), burnout is a result of chronic job demands and continued threats to recourses necessary for successful performance. But from where do the continued threats emerge? Is the organization a jungle where the antelope must be afraid of the lion and the lion must be afraid of the circus recruiter? Continued threats emerge perhaps because organizations are machines which induce anxiety in people who become a part of them. Organizational Culture is neither a part of structure nor process. It is a part of the specific violence that the organizations have the capacity to inflict. It is about the specific anxieties that they have the capacity to induce in subjects. Thus, the IIM A student is worried about not being adequately prepared to discuss the operation management case to be taken up in class tomorrow. On the other hand, the TISS M.A. HRM&LR student is more worried about what should I write in my fieldwork journal. Better to read John Grisham sitting in the last row of the class. Organizations become tragedies when the desires and joys of people are related to events outside the organization after the day’s job is over.
Proposition 3: So long as organizations are defined by the anxieties they produce instead of the joys they yield, they will be immersed in the manufacturing of burnout.
According to Halbesleben and Buckby (2004), interventions for preventing burnout have logically focused on reducing job demands and providing employees with supplemental resources. Perhaps supplemental resources are like new toys that are given to James Bond when he embarks on a mission. Supplemental resources are immersed in a play-off between two organizational concepts – history and memory. Organizational history is about documented artifacts, about tangible objects which actors can transfer from one entity to another. Memory is about the intangible, which has not been transcribed objectively in to the organization’s narrative. It is about small narratives that subjects cherish and consider important. History is about the grand narratives and moments of the organization. Resources are in line with historically transcribed exchanges within organizations. But, James Bond is not driven as much by the exchange of resources as by the memory of other beautiful, aesthetic adventures. Because his name is Bond, James Bond there is more style in James Bond than in the glamour of the toys that are given to him. More than resources, what matters is the foolishness, courage and chivalry in walking into the villain’s den. No other resource is more important than your own wit. When you are burnt out, that is the first thing you lose – your own wit, the ability to be cheerful.
What does a primary school teacher, who is the only teacher in the village school need? What does the doctor in a government hospital, where the stream of patients is endless need? Do they need more resources – perhaps another teacher or another doctor to support their endeavors? Does James Bond need another James Bond, a twin brother to support his endeavors? But a twin brother would be the end of James Bond – his dangerous tryst with foolish luck. What the school teacher and the doctor need is the upliftment of memory who will appreciate the teacher for a class well taught. Who will appreciate the doctor for his imagination and intuition for a 10 minute diagnosis done well. Life consists of several 10 minute glories. James Bond knows these 10 minute beautiful glories very well. James Bond is more a Spy and less a super hero. Both, spies and super heroes live in a world of anonymity. But, spies have peers – they play games – spies know that there is a community to which they belong. Both, friends and enemies belong to that community. Superheroes on the other hand are solitary creatures – they have no peers, no community. Memory is about the warmth and appreciation of peers. History is about the promotions and incentives that are obtained after good performance appraisals. When we speak about the warmth of memory for the doctor or the school teacher, we are interested in the concept of burnout. When we speak about efficiency and service delivery, we are interested in adding more teachers and doctors; we are interested in providing additional resources. Providing additional resources will always be about improving organizational performance and service. Providing additional resources can never be about doing something to eliminate burnout. Burnout is eliminated through everyday processes of community warmth and peer appreciation. Burnout is eliminated when a subject feels good about herself as a human being. And one feels good about oneself when the good that is done is appreciated by others. But do organizations constitute subjects as peers rendering solidarity to one another or as competitors who must enviously battle with one another? Constituting peers as a community of solidarity requires the privileging of memory over history. Is time constituted in organizations as history or memory? Will we be worried about completing 75 years as an organization and celebrating platinum jubilee or will we be worried about the various small narratives that keep alive the joys and struggles of organizations?
Proposition 4: Unfortunately, organizations forget memories and remember histories. Consequently small narratives are forgotten while grand narratives are remembered. Consequently burnout is produced.
Let us pause for a moment and ask – how good are we as peers. When so many questions have been posed as research projects, doesn’t it reflect our intellectual curiosities? Doesn’t it reflect our journeys and tryst as voyagers who want to travel across storms and find out what lies beyond them? Do we need methodological, theoretical and advisory resources in order to be able to cross a storm? Was Vasco D’Gama provided with methodology of how to sail across a rough sea? Vasco D’Gama was foolish, as foolish as James Bond who has the chivalry to walk into a villain’s den. When we read and fail to understand, doesn’t it reflect our intellectual curiosity? Fools are important people; they have an uncanny insight into the affairs of the world on account of their foolishness. Methodology, theory, advice, instructors (guides) will all make you wise. But wisdom comes with numerous anxieties, it deflates risk. Uneasy lies the head which wears the crown of wisdom. Better is the bravado of the fool. Simply sitting down and marveling at the breadth of the questions you are asking, the courage which lies behind them, and the foolishness. What breathtaking beauty to engage with this foolishness. But methodology, theory, will make you wiser. It will also make you dumber. But to be foolish is not to be dumb; it is to be enterprising in asking dangerous, risky and romantic questions. What is the point in asking the question “will you marry me?”, if you know that the answer will be no? Pursuing a response when the answer is no – is dangerous obsession. What is the point in asking the question – “will you marry me?”, if you know that the answer will be yes? If the answer is going to be yes, and you have not yet asked the question, then you are not interested in love, you are interested in something else. Romance lies in the undecidable, in being foolish, in not knowing the odds of whether the answer is going to be yes or no. But, we have not yet marveled at the questions you have asked. You have not yet felt good about the surge of excitement or the happiness of surmounting a challenge when you framed the question you wanted to ask. But the wildness of your questions will soon be tamed; they will become theoretically and methodologically appropriate. They will become domesticated, predictable pet animals making appropriate noses. Do you therefore realize what organizations do to you? Do you realize why we get burnt out? Eventually there is no time to stand and stare. But there is a lot of time to be bitter, be brutal and be burnt out. Where are the answers to issues of being burnt out lying – in OB and psychology or in the poetry of William Harvey Davies?
What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at beauty’s glanced, and watches her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.
References
- Cole, M.S., Walter, F., Bedeian, A.G., and O’Boyle, E.H. (2012). Job burnout and employee engagement: A meta-analytic examination of construct proliferation. Journal of management, 38 (5), 1550-81.
- Hobfoll, S.E., and Shirom, A. (2000). Conservation of resources theory: application to stress and management in the workplace. In R T Golembiewski (ed) – Handbook of organizational behavior (2nd rev ed): 57-81. New York: Dekker.
- Halbesleben, J.R. B. (2006). Sources of social support and burnout: A meta-analytic test of the conservation of resources model, Journal of Applied psychology, 91:1134-1145.
- Halbesleben, J.R. B. (2006). Sources of social support and burnout: A meta-analytic test of the conservation of resources model, Journal of Applied psychology, 91:1134-1145.
Author Information:
Srinath Jagannathan currently works in the Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Area of Indian Institute of Management, Indore. He completed his doctoral education from the Personnel and Industrial Relations Area of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where he explored workers’ experiences of insecurity for his thesis.
