The roles of effort-reward imbalance and work-life imbalance as parallel mediators and overcommitment as moderator in the relationship between role stressors and burnout

Based on the transactional stress approach, which predicts that employees' negative stress experiences will occur within the framework of their cognitive evaluations of stressors and in a dynamic process, this study evaluates the effects of role stressors on burnout within the framework of an extended stress model. The proposed model, it is aimed to reveal the mediating roles of effort-reward imbalance and work-life imbalance in the relationship between role stressors and burnout and the moderating effects of overcommitment coping mechanism in these relationships. In the study, multiple regression analyses were conducted on 705 participants consisting of academic staff, physicians, and nurses across Turkey. First, the parallel mediating roles of effort-reward and work-life imbalances in the relationships between role stressors of role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload and burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy were examined. Then, the moderated mediation hypotheses regarding the effect of overcommitment were tested. The results show that effort-reward imbalance and work-life imbalance together mediate the effect of role stressors on burnout dimensions. Support was provided for the mediation of both variables in emotional exhaustion and cynicism, and only work-life imbalance in professional efficacy dimension. Moreover, it was found that overcommitment mostly did not moderate role stressors' effects on burnout through effort-reward and work-life imbalances or weakened the existing effect by acting in the opposite direction. This was found to be caused by the fact that overcommitment acts as a partial buffer in the relationship between effort-reward and work-life imbalances and burnout dimensions