How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to Do About It
November 1, 1997
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.
October 15, 1997
Maslach and Leiter present a general indictment of corporations, charging that burnout is widespread and a major issue in many occupations. Burnout stems from fundamental changes in the workplace and the nature of jobs caused by economic trends, technology, and management philosophy (specifically, a short-term focus on the bottom line). The authors consider burnout to be the index of the dislocation between what people are and what they have to do in their job, exemplified by exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffectiveness. The risk of burnout grows when the workplace does not recognize the human side of work. Causes of burnout are work overload (too much to do in too little time with too few resources); lack of control over one's work; lack of reward for work; lack of work community; and lack of fairness (people are not shown respect and their self worth is not confirmed). And we learn about strategies to neutralize these causes. ((Reviewed October 15, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)