Job Burnout (JB) is a demanding syndrome that leaves employees exhausted and dealing with cognitive and emotional problems, with symptoms lasting up to 10 years. To understand why JB symptoms...Show moreJob Burnout (JB) is a demanding syndrome that leaves employees exhausted and dealing with cognitive and emotional problems, with symptoms lasting up to 10 years. To understand why JB symptoms pertain for so long, different resource theories were integrated to investigate the impact of JB on an individual gain process between job resources, personal resources, and recovery gained through physical exercise. It was predicted that skill discretion (SD), a common job resource, increases the personal resource self-efficacy (SE) which, in turn, enhances the recovery gained from physical exercise. This gain process was proposed to be dampened by JB, leaving employees with higher JB symptoms in a less advantageous position for resource gain as compared to those with lower symptoms. Using longitudinal data across three workweeks, self-report questionnaires were administered among full-time employees (N = 163). Although correlations revealed that the proposed relationships were found at specific weeks, hierarchical regression analyses revealed no across-time relationships, meaning no weekly gain process could be identified between SD, SE, and recovery gained through exercise. In addition, against expectations, no negative impact of JB on the gain process was found. Thus, the exact relationships between job resources, personal resources, recovery gained through exercise, and JB remain unclear. Future research is needed to further investigate these relationships preferably by using a different time lag than one week and by applying different roles of personal resources within the Job Demands-Resources framework.Show less
