The impact of personal characteristics, quality of working life and psychological well-being on job burnout among Iranian external auditors

Abstract

Purpose Given the negative consequences of job burnout for both individual auditors and audit firms, the present study aims to examine the effect of auditors' personal characteristics, working life quality and psychological well-being on auditors' job burnout. Design/methodology/approach We chose 240 auditors (junior, senior, manager and partner) who work at 53 audit and public accounting firms in Mashhad during 2015–2016 as our sample. The respondents were randomly selected and the data were gathered through the distribution of questionnaires of Walton’s (1973) quality of working, Ryff’s (1995) psychological well-being and Maslach and Jackson’s (1984) job burnout. We also employ structural equation modeling (SEM) along with statistical path analysis to test our hypotheses by using R statistical software. Findings Consistent with our expectations and prior literature, our findings suggest that auditors' job burnout is significantly and positively influenced by auditors' personal traits, quality of working life and psychological well-being. Originality/value The present study is quite remarkable and unique in that it focuses on a specific audit market where there are significant differences in socio-economic, political and cultural factors with those of Western or European developed markets. The results provided in this paper could be fruitful for auditors, regulators and policymakers.