Publication year: 2011
Source: Children and Youth Services Review, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 2 September 2011
Javier, Boyas , Leslie H., Wind , Suk-Young, Kang
Research suggests that age and organizational factors are consistently linked with job stress, burnout, and intent to leave among child protection workers. However, no study has contextualized how age matters with regards to these adverse employee outcomes. We conducted a theory driven path analysis that identifies sources of employment-based social capital, job stress, burnout, and intent to leave among two age groups. We used a statewide purposive sample of 209 respondents from a public child welfare organization in a New England state in the United States. Results suggest that the paths to job stress, burnout and intent to leave differed…
Highlights: ► The current study set out to identify whether the paths to job stress, burnout, and intent to leave differed by age group: workers younger than 37 (n=110) and workers older than 38 (n=99). Furthermore, we examined the extent to which employment-based social capital directly shaped the aforementioned employee outcomes. ► At the bivariate level, we found that on the dimensions of employment-based social capital, the two groups only varied significantly in one dimension—organizational commitment. Older workers reported significantly higher levels of organizational commitment than younger workers. The two groups varied significantly in all employee outcomes of interest. Younger workers reported significantly higher levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, job stress, and intent to leave than older workers. ► At the multivariate level, we found that some aspects of the hypothesized model were equivalent for both age groups: (a) the contributions of fairness, influence, and organizational commitment on job stress, (b) the relationship of job stress to emotional exhaustion, (c) the contribution of organizational commitment to depersonalization, and (d) the influence of emotional exhaustion and organizational commitment to intent to leave. However, our investigation has unearthed a number of areas where younger and older workers differ significantly.