An Investigation of the Job Burnout Syndrome in Personal Selling
Department
Marketing and Professional Sales
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2011
Abstract
Job burnout has been described as a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a feeling of reduced personal accomplishment that frequently occurs among individuals who do client-centered work of some kind such as selling. Burnout is a particularly troubling condition as it has been related to a host of organizational problems ranging from increased turnover to decreased job satisfaction and performance. Burnout has been well documented and studied in several client-centered positions such as nursing and teaching, but it has received little attention in the sales literature. This paper builds on previous research by shedding light on the sequential steps in the burnout process in personal selling while empirically testing a model of burnout in the professional selling position.