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Background. Workaholic tendencies cause employees to develop negative attitudes toward their jobs (Keown, 2008) and to experience burnout (Andreassen, Ursin, and Eriksen, 2007). Burnout adversely affects work of employees (Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter, 1996). Therefore, it might be suggested that workaholic tendencies accompanied by burnout could decrease productivity of employees and organizational efficiency. It is critical to examine such negative effects, particularly in teaching profession which requires high motivation.
Purpose. The purpose of this study is to examine whether there is a correlation between workaholic tendencies and burnout levels of teachers.
Method. Survey method was used for this study. The study group consists of 227 teachers from schools in central districts of Ankara. 73,1 % of participants were female and 26,4 were male; 19,8 % were younger than 31, 56,8 were between 31-40 and 23,3 % were higher than 40.
Turkish form of Workaholism Battery (Ersoy-Kart, 2005) which originally developed by Spence & Robbins (1992) and Turkish form of Maslach Burnout Inventory (Ergin, 1982) which was originally developed by Maslach & Jackson (1981) were to measure workaholic tendencies and burnout levels of participants.
SPSS 13.00 was used for statistical analyses. In accordance with purpose of study, percentage, mean, standard deviation, parametric (MANOVA) and non-parametric variation tests (Kruskal Wallis H-test), and Person Correlation Coefficient test were employed.
Results and discussion. It was seen that workaholic tendencies and burnout levels of male and female teachers did not significantly differ from each other. In the literature, it is likely to have supporting research results about workaholic tendencies (Bardakçı, 2007; Oğuz and Akın, 2008). There are conflicting results reported as for differences in burnout levels by gender. Such a variation in the literature might be interpreted as the fact that variation in teacher burnout by gender may be moderated some other contextual variables.
Older teachers, compared to younger teachers, have more workaholic tendencies, which might be interpreted as teachers who have worked for many years gradually adopt their profession. The reason for such a difference might be due to the fact that young teachers spend more time in out work activities. On the other hand, young teachers experience more burnout than older teachers. There was a similar result in Konert’s study (1997). Some other studies show that older teachers experience more burnout (Angerer, 2000; Avşaroğlu et al., 2005). Kırılmaz et al. (2003) report that age is not a significant factor in burnout levels of teachers. It is possible to have contradictory findings in the literature about the differential effects of age on burnout.
The perceptions of teachers about workaholic tendencies and burnout do not significantly differ by educational background. Despite the insignificant difference, means scores suggest that teachers with postgraduate education have more workaholic tendencies and experience more burnout than others. However, it is not reasonable to make any interpretations for this case since the difference is not significant.
There is a moderate, significant negative correlation between workaholic tendencies and burnout levels of teachers. In Bonebright’s study (2001) on the effect of workaholic tendencies on stress, burnout and productivity, it was shown that workaholics experienced more burnout than other employees. In the literature, there are studies which report workaholic tendencies have a positive correlation with burnout, as indicated by Bonebright’s research (2001) (Andreassen et al., 2007; Moorhead and Griffin, 1992). From this aspect, the result of the present study differs from the literature. In fact, it is not an expected result for the study to show a negative correlation between workaholic tendencies as a self-damaging behavioral syndrome and a phenomenon with negative effects like burnout. This case might have been caused by a measurement error or a cultural difference in the way burnout or workaholic tendencies are perceived. It might be suggested that the reason for the unexpected case here should be examined by further research.
Teaching is a profession with a high level of burnout (Meade, 1996; Thorton, Peltier and Hill, 2005) and burnout negatively affects not only individuals, but also organizations (Angerer, 2000) and teacher relationships with students (Karakelle and Canpolat, 2008). It could be said that attempts to prevent teachers from experiencing burnout will be much contributive to attain goals in the education system. Measures such as administrative support for teachers and mentorship, awareness of teacher capacity, developing creative learning environment for teachers and less student number in classrooms are suggested to prevent teacher burnout (Gates, 2007). Teachers work load,, pays and benefits as well as working conditions should be further examined in relation to teacher burnout and teacher workaholic tendencies.
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