Introduction

Job burnout is a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job. It has been recognized as an occupational hazard for various people-oriented professions, such as human services, education, and health care. Recently, as other occupations have become more oriented to customer service, and as global economic realities have changed organizations, the phenomenon of burnout has become relevant in these areas as well. Burnout is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. The standard measure that is used to assess these three dimensions is the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI).

As a reliably identifiable job stress syndrome, burnout places the individual stress experience within a larger organizational context of people's relation to their work. Interventions to alleviate burnout and to promote its opposite, ...