Who Gets Burnout and When? The Role of Personality, Job Control, and Organizational Identification in Predicting Burnout Among Police Officers

Burnout is found to negatively impact the quality of life of professionals working in the human service industries. By studying 152 police officers in Kolkata, India, we explore what contributes to burnout, and in which context burnout can be reduced or increased. We have focused on the relationship between personality and burnout, and examined the relationship between different job aspects, like job control and organizational identification with burnout. Results indicate that certain personality traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness significantly predict personal accomplishment, while neuroticism predicts emotional exhaustion. Low job control was related with increased emotional exhaustion, and higher level of identification with organization was related with increased sense of personal accomplishment.