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Introduction
As internal and external public organizational environments have drastically changed in recent years, public employees are becoming more stressed about the possibility of losing their tenure, seniority-based salary, and stable organizational culture. Organizational environmental changes tend to make employees dissatisfied and emotionally frustrated with their work conditions. When employees become stressed, they may eventually leave their organizations. Emotional dissonance, i.e., the difference between employees’ feelings and the actual expressions expected of them in the workplace, decreases job satisfaction, and leads to high turnover intention (Abraham, 1999).
Public employees are no exception. Recently, tough economic conditions in the government have decreased public employees’ job satisfaction, causing burnout and higher turnover intention. More specifically, this research investigated the burnout and turnover intention of public employees, specifically local tax revenue officers. Individuals often express their discontent with the government’s tax policy directly to revenue collection officers. Such a stressful work environment may significantly influence revenue officers’ burnout and turnover intention. According to Ducharme et al. (2008), most tax collectors suffer from emotional exhaustion before they consider quitting their jobs. Issever et al. (2008) suggested that because revenue officers play a critical role in the functioning of the government, their psychological and emotional states should be managed systemically to improve their health and work performance.
Thus, what would alleviate burnout and turnover intention for public employees? This research focused on the association of burnout and turnover intention among public employees with their job motivation. More specifically, we considered public employees’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as job factors related to burnout and turnover intention. In particular, this research tested whether intrinsic motivation was more effective than extrinsic motivation in decreasing burnout and turnover intention based on self-determination theory. Additionally, this research investigated the individual factors associated with the effects of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation on burnout and turnover intention of public employees; specifically, it explored the mediating roles of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and public service motivation (PSM) in the relationship of employees’ job motivation with burnout and turnover intention in the public sector.
The effect of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation on burnout and turnover intention
Why do human resource management researchers need to study employee burnout and turnover intention? With the increasing concerns about complexity and uncertainty in the work environment, Maslach...