The Moderating Role of Ethical Leadership in Preventing Employees’ Burnout Caused by Work Overload: The Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion

Abstract

This study sets out to investigate how work overload causes employees to feel emotionally ex-hausted which in turn leads them toward burnout. The study further explores the moderating effect of ethical leadership on the relationship between emotional exhaustion and employee burnout. The theoretical frame-work of the study was tested using survey responses gathered from 385 faculty members of Pakistani public higher educational institutions (HEIs). The statistical analysis was performed to confirm the hypotheses using SPSS software. Results indicated that all of the hypotheses were confirmed and the theoretical model was proved to be significant. The work overload caused employees to feel emotionally exhausted. And the emo-tional exhaustion made employees more prone to burnout. As expected, emotional exhaustion significantly mediated the positive effect of work overload on employee burnout. Furthermore, the ethical leadership was found to moderate the relationship between emotional exhaustion and employee burnout. The moderating effect of ethical leadership on the association between emotional exhaustion and employee burnout has never been studied especially in Pakistani public HEIs context.