Determinants and Correlates of Faculty Burn‐out in US Research Universities

The relationships between support variables (work significance,collegial support and chairperson′s support) and indicators of faculty burn‐out (emotional exhaustion and feeling of personal accomplishment)are examined. In addition, the relationships between the syndrome of faculty burnout and its potential consequences (organisational commitment and recent research performance) are explored. The study is conducted using a sample of faculty members from 40 research university departments, ten each in physics, sociology, electrical engineering, and education. The major findings are: support indicators are the most influential determinants of emotional exhaustion in physics and the least influential in sociology and education; the same support indicators have the maximal explanatory power with regard to personal accomplishment in physics, and the minimal explanatory power in education; emotional exhaustion is related strongly to commitment and recent published articles in hard sciences, whereas the same relationships are quite weak for the soft sciences; and personal accomplishment is positively related to commitment in all fields while it is related strongly to recent published articles in hard sciences. The implications of this study are discussed.