▪ Abstract Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. The past 25 years of research has established the complexity of the construct, and places the individual stress experience within a larger organizational context of people's relation to their work. Recently, the work on burnout has expanded internationally and has led to new conceptual models. The focus on engagement, the positive antithesis of burnout, promises to yield new perspectives on interventions to alleviate burnout. The social focus of burnout, the solid research basis concerning the syndrome, and its specific ties to the work domain make a distinct and valuable contribution to people's health and well-being.

The experience of burnout has been the focus of much research during the past few decades. Measures have been developed, as have various theoretical models, and research studies from many countries have contributed to a better understanding of the causes and consequences of this occupationally‐specific dysphoria. The majority of this work has focused on human service occupations, and particularly health care. Research on the burnout experience for psychiatrists mirrors much of the broader literature, in terms of both sources and outcomes of burnout. But it has also identified some of the unique stressors that mental health professionals face when they are dealing with especially difficult or violent clients. Current issues of particular relevance for psychiatry include the links between burnout and mental illness, the attempts to redefine burnout as simply exhaustion, and the relative dearth of evaluative research on potential interventions to treat and/or prevent burnout. Given that the treatment goal for burnout is usually to enable people to return to their job, and to be successful in their work, psychiatry could make an important contribution by identifying the treatment strategies that would be most effective in achieving that goal.

This position paper introduces the emerging concept of work engagement: a positive, fulfilling, affective-motivational state of work-related well-being that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption. Although there are different views of work engagement, most scholars agree that engaged employees have high levels of energy and identify strongly with their work. The most often used instrument to measure engagement is the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, a self-report instrument that has been validated in many countries across the world. Research on engagement has investigated how engagement differs from related concepts (e.g., workaholism, organizational commitment), and has focused on the most important predictors of work engagement. These studies have revealed that engagement is a unique concept that is best predicted by job resources (e.g., autonomy, supervisory coaching, performance feedback) and personal resources (e.g., optimism, self-efficacy, self-esteem). Moreover, the first studies have shown that work engagement is predictive of job performance and client satisfaction. The paper closes with an account of what we do not know about work engagement, and offers a brief research agenda for future work.

A longitudinal study predicted changes in burnout or engagement a year later by identifying 2 types of early indicators at the initial assessment. Organizational employees (N = 466) completed measures of burnout and 6 areas of worklife at 2 times with a 1-year interval. Those people who showed an inconsistent pattern at Time 1 were more likely to change over the year than were those who did not. Among this group, those who also displayed a workplace incongruity in the area of fairness moved to burnout at Time 2, while those without this incongruity moved toward engagement. The implications of these 2 predictive indicators are discussed in terms of the enhanced ability to customize interventions for targeted groups within the workplace.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on the career of the burnout concept itself, rather than reviewing research findings on burnout.Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents an overview of the concept of burnout.Findings: The roots of the burnout concept seem to be embedded within broad social, economic, and cultural developments that took place in the last quarter of the past century and signify the rapid and profound transformation from an industrial society into a service economy. This social transformation goes along with psychological pressures that may translate into burnout. After the turn of the century, burnout is increasingly considered as an erosion of a positive psychological state. Although burnout seems to be a global phenomenon, the meaning of the concept differs between countries. For instance, in some countries burnout is used as a medical diagnosis, whereas in other countries it is a non‐medical, socially accepted label that carries a minimum stigma in terms of a psychiatric diagnosis.Originality/value: The paper documents that the exact meaning of the concept of burnout varies with its context and the intentions of those using the term.

Organizational commitment and burnout were related to interpersonal relationships of nurses in a small general hospital. Regular communication contacts among personnel were differentiated as supervisor or coworker contact, and these categories were further differentiated into pleasant and unpleasant contacts. The results were consistent with a view of burnout in which emotional exhaustion leads to greater depersonalization which subsequently leads to diminished personal accomplishment. Interpersonal contact with personnel in the organization was related to the development of burnout at each stage. Patterns of pleasant and unpleasant contacts with supervisors and coworkers were related to the three aspects of burnout in a distinct manner. High burnout was related to diminished organizational commitment, which was also related to aspects of the interpersonal environment of the organization. The results are discussed in the context of a comprehensive approach to psychological adjustment to a worksetting.