The balance of give and take: Toward a social exchange model of burnout

Based on the notion of a disturbed balance between give and take, about a decade ago a research program on social exchange and burnout was initiated. Meanwhile, about twenty (longitudinal) studies have been carried out including more than eight thousand professionals such as teachers, physicians, nurses, police officers, prison officers, social workers, and mental disability workers. This article pulls together the results that have been obtained by the research program as well as by other researchers in the field. Based on empirical results, an integrative comprehensive social exchange model is proposed that includes three levels of social exchange with recipients, colleagues, and the organization as a whole. The hallmark of burnout - emotional exhaustion - appears to be related to lack of reciprocity at all three levels of social exchange. in addition, professionals who feel disadvantaged at a particular level of exchange tend to withdraw from that specific relationship. Furthermore, results indicate that simple and straightforward measures of reciprocity are to be preferred above more complicated measures, that is': (1) intrapersonal measures of reciprocity that exclusively refer to one's own standards are superior to more complex interpersonal measures that include comparisons with others; (2) one-item ratings of reciprocity that are completed by the respondents are superior to researcher calculated ratio-scores of investments and outcomes.