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Image of a boss yelling at his employees. Bad leaders are not solely to blame for bad outcomes -their followers can make it worse. On the flipside, followers and leaders can buffer undesirable effects on organizational functioning. Study published in Frontiers in Psychology.

Featured news

29 Oct 2018

Bad boss? You may be making things better – or worse!

Disagreeable, dishonest and careless leaders can mean bad outcomes for companies – but the employees they work with also play a major role: Frontiers in Psychology

Psychology

12 Aug 2016

Burnout is caused by mismatch between unconscious needs and job demands

New research shows that burnout is caused by a mismatch between a person’s subconscious needs and the opportunities and demands at the workplace. These results have implications for the prevention of job burnout. Imagine an accountant who is outgoing and seeks closeness in her social relationships, but whose job offers little scope for contact with colleagues or clients. Now imagine a manager, required to take responsibility for a team, but who does not enjoy taking center-stage or being in a leadership role. For both, there is a mismatch between their individual needs and the opportunities and demands at the workplace. A new study in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology shows that such mismatches put employees at risk of burnout. Burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion from work, which results in a lack of motivation, low efficiency, and a helpless feeling. Its health effects include anxiety, cardiovascular disease, immune disorders, insomnia, and depression. The financial burden from absenteeism, employee turnover, reduced productivity, and medical, legal, and insurance expenses due to burnout and general work-related stress is staggering: for example, the American Institute of Stress estimates the total cost to American enterprises at 300 billion US$ per […]

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