A Study on Perception of Job Burnout on Some Selected Women Executives and Their Leadership Styles

Abstract

Job burnout is a condition that occurs over a prolong period of time and is characterized by emotional exhaustion. Burnout is very common in stressful jobs involving long working hours like employees at call-centres, health care, sales, marketing, retail etc and consequences of burnout often lead to negative attitudes like physical fatigue, cognitive weariness. In this paper an attempt has been made to highlight the impact of job burnout on selected group of women executives working in different service sectors in Kolkata. Companies are highly aware that supporting female leadership and fostering gender equality is an absolute must in today’s working environment. As many women are working in responsible positions as departmental head, team leader or project head in different service organization and everyday they are also confronted with different complex workplace problems. This study established that job burnout variables affects their professional and personal lives as many of them had perceived moderate level of job burnout in their workplace. The analysis is made with the help of primary survey conducted on sample respondents of 110 women executives working in banking and IT sector in and around Kolkata. Job burnout not only varies with the various demographic profiles of the respondents like age, marital status and years of their professional experiences but also significantly has its influence on their leadership styles and women under study prefer more democratic style of leadership towards their subordinates.

Keywords: Job Burnout, Demographic Profiles, Leadership Styles, Health Outcomes, Coping.

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