The Truth About Burnout: How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to Do About It
This collaboration by Maslach (Career Burnout, Free Pr., 1989), creator of the eponymous Maslach Burnout Inventory, and Leiter, a psychologist and educator, has a telling subtitle. To wit: the organization shoulders the responsibility for the individual's inability to subsist and thrive in the workplace. Although readers might challenge this premise, the authors do a credible job of examining the dichotomy between the individual and the organizational value system. They cite six reasons for burnout?work overload, powerlessness, insufficient reward, system unfairness, breakdown of community, and value systems in conflict?and recommend a process-oriented engagement to advance both the individual and the organization. Similar approaches can be found in W. Edwards Demings's well-known "Fourteen Points" and Stephen R. Covey's books (e.g., First Things First, LJ 4/1/94). Recommended for business collections.?Steven Silkunas, DCO SEPTA/FRONTIER, Conshohocken, Pa.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.