Social Support or Organizational Support: Which One Is More Predictive of Job Burnout in workers?

Abstract

Introduction: Social and organizational supports are effective factors closely related to job burnout and Due to the limited studies in this area on Iranian workers, this study aims to determine the predictability of social support and organizational support in  job burnout for workers in Yazd.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out among 200 textile workers in Yazd through stratified random sampling. The data were collected by the tools including demographic characteristics, questionnaires of social support, organizational support, and Maslach's job burnout. The data were analyzed by SPSS using the Pearson correlation coefficient and the multiple linear regression. The Significance level of tests was considered as p <0.05. 

Results: There was a significant strong positive relationship between job burnout and emotional exhaustion (r = 0.88) .There was found a significant negative correlation between job burnout  and social support (r =- 0.390), friend support (-0.401), family supoert (-0.218), important others support (- 0.283) (p <0.001 (. Multiple linear egression analysis showed that friends, the family, explained 17.8% of job burnout changes, and important people  (R2=0.178,  p<0.001) whereas support from friends was the strongest effective factor for job burnout (β= - 0.338, p <0.001). 35.9% of the changes in job burnout were explained by social and organizational support (R2= 0.359, p<0.001) with organizational support being the strongest effective factor on job burnout (β= - 0.472, p<0.001).

Conclusion: Given that organizational support was the most significant predictor of job burnout in workers, developing organizational intervention to  increase support in workplace can be regarded as strategies to reduce or slow down job burnout among workers.