Antecedents to Internal Auditor Burnout

Abstract

Over the last ten years, the literature on accounting practice has evidenced a persistent number of articles that draw attention to the existence and consequence of work-related stress. Typified by those that say they thrive on it, stress, by itself, is not always a negative condition. Unlike stress, burnout is believed to have only dysfunctional consequences for the behavioral performance and psychological well-being of accounting professionals. For instance, it is reported that burnout symptoms occur in public accounting (Rose, 1983; Sanders, 1998), internal auditing (Kusel and Deyoub, 1983), and management accounting (Journal of Accountancy, 1984; Figler, 1980). Despite the acknowledgment of burnout in the practitioner literature, the focus of academic research has largely continued to be on role stress. For the most part, the connection between stress, life enjoyment, career success, health and withdrawal from organizational participation has been articulated as the motivation to study role conflict and ambiguity in accounting organizations (Senatra, 1980; Collins and Killough, 1992; Haskins et al., 1990). These studies have produced a body of conflicting results. This could be because the source of negative results, job burnout, has not been theorized or measured by this work. For many years, only two primarily descriptive unpublished papers studied accountant burnout on an explicit basis. These studies produced mixed evidence associating burnout with gender, family, and work concerns. Sweeney and Summers (2002) show that the burnout experienced in public accounting increases during the busy season. More generally, Fogarty et al. (2000) produced evidence that burnout should be considered as a mediating variable between role stress and traditional behavioral outcomes. Notwithstanding the recent increase in academic attention, there still remains a paucity of work on the topic for the accounting profession. This article aims to fill the preceding gaps in the literature. It draws upon studies in fields such as occupational health and applied psychology to argue for a place for the burnout construct that is distinctive from other aspects of job/role stress. This leads to a set of hypotheses that places burnout as an endogenous condition in a model of behavioral and attitudinal consequences. A second section describes the empirical study in which data were collected from internal auditors. The next section provides evidence that both the psychological inclinations of individuals and their cognitive assessment of their skills affect their inclinations to burnout. The final section discusses the results, clarifies implications, and acknowledges limitations. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development Burnout describes a specific psychological condition in which people suffer emotional exhaustion, experience a lack of personal accomplishment, and tend to depersonalize others (Freudenberger, 1974). The occupational health and applied psychology literature has established a domain for the burnout construct, validated its measurement, and legitimated the study of its causes and consequences (Lee and Ashforth, 1996). The consensus in this literature is that burnout tendencies involve a psychological condition characterized by three interrelated symptoms (see Shirom, 1989). First, emotional exhaustion is evidenced by feelings of depleted energy and related sensations as a result of excessive psychoemotional demands. These excessive demands stem from work tasks that require innovative and creative solutions, and are most prominent in an environment of time pressure or related to matters of great consequence (Jackson et al., 1986). Second, reduced personal accomplishment entails attributions of inefficacy, low motivation and reduced self-esteem. Often these conditions are associated with the belief that future efforts will not be worthwhile because past efforts have repeatedly failed to produce desired results (Abramson et al. …