Reducing Healthcare Employees’ Burnout through Ethical Leadership: The Role of Altruism and Motivation

Abstract

Globally, employee burnout (EBO) is a black swan in healthcare management. Previous organizational management literature shows that EBO was often misunderstood by assuming it as a personal issue. However, the new definition by the World Health Organization (WHO) clearly indicates that EBO is an occupational phenomenon that places responsibility on organizations to manage it. Although recent evidence suggests ethical leadership (ELP) style may be important to mitigate EBO, shockingly, such relationships were not tested in healthcare systems, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Filling this knowledge gap in the existing body of knowledge, this study aimed to investigate the ELP–EBO relationship. To explain the underlying mechanism of how ELP reduces EBO, this study included two psychological factors as a mediator and a moderator: altruism (AL) and intrinsic motivation (IM). The data were obtained from hospital employees via a self-administered questionnaire (n = 289, paper-pencil method). A hypothetical framework was designed and tested for empirical validation through structural equation modeling (SEM). Empirical evidence confirmed that ELP reduces the risk of burnout among hospital employees, and AL mediates this relationship. The results also confirmed the conditional indirect role of IM in the above proposed mediated relationship. This study’s outcomes can help hospital administration deal with EBO’s epidemic in an ELP framework. Other, different implications have also been discussed in detail.