Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity as Conditions of Job Burnout of Project-Engineering Organization

The thesis deals with professional burnout of project engineering company employees, and correlation of such personal characteristics as role conflict and role ambiguity with professional burnout. Numerous studies prove that role stress, expressed as role conflict and/or role ambiguity at work, is one of the professional burnout prerequisites. Empirical object of those studies are “social” employees, having extensive contacts with other people as a part of their job responsibilities. But other factors, including organizational factors like nature, scope, intensity and conditions of work, etc., can also induce professional burnout. Preliminary diagnostics of professional burnout level, using express questionnaire, internal document analysis and manager and employee interviews aimed at revealing role conflict and/or role ambiguity prerequisites, preceded main interviews. The objective of the study is to define correlation strength between role conflict, role ambiguity and professional burnout of project engineering company employees. The Maslach three-factor model was a base framework of professional burnout in the study. Rizzo questionnaire was used to identify employee role conflict and role ambiguity levels. The study showed, that correlation between role ambiguity and emotional exhaustion, as well as correlation between role conflict level and reduction of personal accomplishment exist. Also, there exists a statistically significant correlation between role ambiguity level and professional burnout in general, and between role conflict level and professional burnout. Recommendations to company management were devised aimed at influencing organizational factors and mitigating employee role conflict and role ambiguity. The study shows that professional burnout problems, caused by role conflict and role ambiguity, could be inherent not only to social profession employees, but also to project engineers given labor and condition specificity in the organization.