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Title: The Impact of Teaching-Research Conflict on Job Burnout among University Teachers: An Integrated Model

Abstract: This study examined the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout, and the moderating roles of perceived supervisor support (PSS) and

psychological capital (PsyCap) in the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout among university teachers. With a cross-sectional design, the data were collected from a convenience sample of 489 university teachers in China. Hierarchical regression analysis was run by using SPSS 19.0 to examine the moderating roles of PSS and PsyCap in the relation between teaching-research conflict and job burnout. The results showed that (a) teaching-research conflict was positively linked to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but negatively linked to personal accomplishment; (b) PSS moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict on both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but did not act as a moderator in the relationship between teaching- research conflict and personal

accomplishment; and (c) PsyCap moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict on all the three dimensions of job burnout.

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Current Psychology

The Impact of Teaching-Research Conflict on Job Burnout among University Teachers:

An Integrated Model

--Manuscript Draft--

Full Title: The Impact of Teaching-Research Conflict on Job Burnout among University Teachers:

An Integrated Model

Article Type: Original Article

Abstract: This study examined the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout, and the moderating roles of perceived supervisor support (PSS) and psychological capital (PsyCap) in the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout among university teachers. With a cross-sectional design, the data were collected from a convenience sample of 489 university teachers in China.

Hierarchical regression analysis was run by using SPSS 19.0 to examine the moderating roles of PSS and PsyCap in the relation between teaching-research conflict and job burnout. The results showed that (a) teaching-research conflict was positively linked to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but negatively linked to personal accomplishment; (b) PSS moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict on both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but did not act as a moderator in the relationship between teaching-research conflict and personal

accomplishment; and (c) PsyCap moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict on all the three dimensions of job burnout.

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The Impact of Teaching-Research Conflict on Job Burnout

among University Teachers: An Integrated Model

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout, and the moderating roles of perceived supervisor support (PSS) and psychological capital (PsyCap) in the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout among university teachers. With a cross-sectional design, the data were collected from a convenience sample of 489 university teachers in China.

Hierarchical regression analysis was run by using SPSS 19.0 to examine the moderating roles of PSS and PsyCap in the relation between teaching-research conflict and job burnout. The results showed that (a) teaching-research conflict was positively linked to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but negatively linked to personal accomplishment; (b) PSS moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict on both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but did not act as a moderator in the relationship between teaching-research conflict and personal accomplishment; and (c) PsyCap moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict on all the three dimensions of job burnout.

Keywords teaching-research conflict, perceived supervisor support (PSS), psychological capital (PsyCap), job burnout, university teachers

1 Introduction

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Job burnout has been a hot topic over the past decades in various fields including HRM, organizational behaviors, education, and psychology. Numerous research has linked burnout to various negative outcomes, such as counterproductive work behavior(Smoktunowicz et al., 2015), turnover intention (Cannon & Herda, 2016), poor work performance (Li, Liu & Luo, 2014), and low well-being (Lizanoa &

Barakb, 2015). Therefore, conducting effective intervention to minimize the negative effects of job burnout is a crucial mission for organization development. Given that recognizing the formation mechanisms is a key premise for intervention, it is valuable to examine the antecedents of job burnout.

As workers in the human service, teachers are the professionals susceptible to job burnout (Maslach, 1982). Regarding university teachers, they are typically burdened with two tasks: teaching and research, which are distinct, but interdependent. It is noteworthy that in this era of knowledge-based economy, innovation is in great demand in China, as well as, in other countries. With social development, universities have become crucial forces in scientific and technological innovation. Therefore, as the workers of an university, teachers need to engage in research innovations.

Meanwhile, teaching as the bounden duty of educators is still the basic requirement for university teachers. While some scholars believe that teaching and research are reciprocal, and the research-based teaching is indispensable (Jencks & Riesman, 1968;

Simons & Elen, 2007), it is inevitable for university teachers to encounter role conflict.

In fact, the conflict between teaching and research among university teachers has long been a common realistic problem. This conflict is generally attributed to the limited

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time and resources (Moore, 1963), that is, it is difficult for teachers to complete both tasks well, because time and resources are limited. As university teachers, given juggling both teacher and researcher roles with limited time and resources, they are susceptible to role conflict, which easily leads to a certain level of job burnout over time. A number of empirical studies have linked role conflict to job burnout (Ghorpade, Lackritz, & Singh, 2011; Li et al., 2015; Moss, 2015; Schwab, 1982;

Wang, Chang, Fu, & Wang, 2012; Wang, Liu, Wang, & Wang, 2012).

Over the past decades, a growing body of research has involved teachers’ job burnout, but until now, few empirical studies have examined the effect of teaching-research conflict on job burnout. To address the research gap, based on the relevant literature and from a perspective of the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker &

Demerouti, 2007; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001), the present study focused on two variables: perceived supervisor support (PSS) and psychological capital (PsyCap), to examine the mechanism underlying the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout among Chinese university teachers.

2 Theoretical background and hypotheses

2.1 Job Burnout and Role Conflict

Maslach and Jachson (1981) viewed job burnout as a three-dimensional syndrome, including emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP) and reduced personal accomplishment (reduced PA). Emotional exhaustion refers to a feeling of being depleted of emotional resources, and is regarded as the core component of burnout;

while depersonalization means negative or excessively detached response to other

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people in workplace, and represents the interpersonal component of burnout. On the other hand, reduced personal accomplishment refers to a feeling of decline in competence and productivity, which represents the self-evaluation component of burnout.

Regarding the antecedents of job burnout among teachers, job characteristics such as role-conflict and role-ambiguity have been identified as key risk factors of job burnout (Wilkerson & Bellini, 2006). Conversely, some psychological factors such as emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, optimism, and resilience have been viewed as important protective factors for job burnout. As far as organizational factors are concerned, organizational justice and support have drawn more attention, due to their close relationships with job burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 1997).

As is a common occupational stressor in the workplace (Mulki, Lassk, & Jaramillo, 2008; Onyemah, 2008), role-conflict refers to “the simultaneous occurrence of two or more role expectations such that compliance with one would make compliance with the other more difficult” (Katz & Kahn, 1978, p. 204). This stressor can be experienced especially by front-line service employees when they bear multiple role expectations that are inconsistent (Kemery, 2006).

According to Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007;

(Demerouti et al. 2001), regardless of the occupation, job characteristics consist of two aspects: job demands and job resources. Job demands reflect the job’s aspects that require employees to make the effort, such as work overload and role conflict, closely linked to physical and/or mental costs (Demerouti et al. 2001). Job resources refer to

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the job’s aspects that promote individuals to perform well in the workplace, such as social support and emotion regulation. The JD-R model offers us a good framework to explain how job characteristics result in burnout. According to this model, job demands are anticipated to drain employees’ physical and mental energy. Meanwhile, to deal with the “health impairment process” caused by job demands, employees always adopt resource compensatory strategies, which result in a “motivational process”. When experiencing long time excessive job demands, the effectiveness of employees’ compensatory strategies fades with time, depleting the reserves of resources and eventually leading to job burnout (Demerouti et al. 2001). There is a growing body of empirical evidence that job demands are the key predictors of job burnout (Bakker et al., 2005; Barkhuizen, Rothmann, & van, 2014; Boyd et al., 2011).

Many empirical studies have demonstrated that role-conflict consistently shows a moderate to high correlation with job burnout (Li et al., 2015; Maslach, Schaufeli, &

Leiter, 2001; Papastylianou, Kaila, & Polychronopoulos, 2009; Piko, 2006; Wang, Chang et al., 2012; Wang, Liu et al., 2012). For example, Papastylianou, Kaila, and Polychronopoulos (2009) found that emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were positively associated with role-conflict. Although role-conflict has been linked to job burnout, few empirical studies have explored the relationship between the teaching-research conflict and job burnout among university teachers. Based on the literature review, we posited:

H1: Teaching-research conflict is positively related to job burnout.

2.2 Perceived Supervisor Support and PsyCap

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The Job Demands-Resources model (JD-R model) suggests that while long time excessive job demands can lead to job burnout, abundant resources can relieve this adverse effect (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). To cope with job burnout, both external and internal resources are necessary. Social support has been identified as a key external resource that improves mental health and other positive physical outcomes (Cohen et al., 1997). Hobfoll (2002) views social support as a process including actual behavior and perceptions of support. Social support can be received from various sources, such as leaders, co-workers, friends or family members (Nohe & Sonntag, 2014). As an important social support in the workplace, perceived supervisor support (PSS) refers to the extent to which employees believe that their contributions are valued, and their well-being is a concern for their supervisors (Kurtessis et al., 2015). Since supervisors act as the agents or representatives of the organization, who can be regarded as the “goaltenders” for subordinates’ promotion, salary, rewards and punishments, they are in charge of subordinates’ various resources and destinies.

Therefore, being responsible for directing and evaluating subordinates’ performance, supervisors play a key role in the formation and change of subordinates’ psychological security, work behaviors and attitudes. In reality, employees always believe that as the agents of the organization, the actions of supervisors are authorized by the organization (Rhoades et al., 2001). Therefore, PSS likely acts as an important resource in relieving the adverse effect of role-conflict (Rhoades & Eisenberger 2002). When employees recognize more support from their supervisors, they are more prone to trusting their supervisors and further to be more committed to the organization, which in turn reduces the perception of role-conflict (Casper et al., 2002). Recently, using a sample

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of university teachers in Texas, Charoensukmongko, Moqbel, and Gutierrez-Wirsching (2016) found out that perceived supervisor support was negatively associated with all dimensions of burnout. Considering the above theory and research findings, we posited:

H2: PSS acts as a moderator for the effect of teaching-research conflict on job burnout among university teachers.

Besides of external resources, individual internal resources should also not be ignored.

The present study herein focused on a relatively new construct, namely, psychological capital (PsyCap). As an important concept drawn from positive organizational behavior, PsyCap refers to a positive psychological state, consisting of four core components: self-efficacy, optimism, resiliency, and hope (Luthans, Luthans, &

Luthans, 2004; Luthans & Youssef, 2004). All these components are open to develop (Luthans et al., 2004). Snyder et al. (1991) defined Hope as a “cognitive set that is based on a reciprocally-derived sense of successful agency (goal directed determination) and pathways (planning to meet goals)” (p. 571). Stajkovic and Luthans (1998) defined self-efficacy as individual’s self-confidence about abilities that s/he may possess. Masten and Reed (2002) simply stated that resilience is a positive response or reaction about adversity. Seligman (1998) defined optimism as an attribution style for explanation of positive events in the shape of permanent, personal causes and the negative incidents in the shapes of temporary, external ones. With the development of world economy, more and more scholars believe that PsyCap goes beyond the traditional capitals (e.g., social and human) (Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio,

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2015). In this regard, Luthans et al. (2004) suggested that psychological capital plays an important role in reducing job burnout. This protective effect of PsyCap can be explained by the JD-R model. As noted earlier, the JD-R model proposes that job resources act as cushions to the effect of job demands (Bakker et al., 2005; Bakker et al., 2007), thereby influencing individual and organizational outcomes. Given that job resources mitigate the adverse effects of job demands, a lack of personal resources hampers tasks accomplishment, thus easily leading to negative outcomes such as job burnout (Mauno, Kinnunen, & Ruokolainen, 2006). As a job demand, teaching-research conflict is no exception to resulting in negative outcomes, such as job burnout. Regarding PsyCap, it has been considered an important mechanism for reducing burnout (Cheung, Tang, & Tang, 2011). Therefore, it can be proposed that in the face of the same teaching-research conflict (job demand), compared to teachers with low PsyCap, teachers with high PsyCap may experience a perception of lower levels of conflict and thus less likely becoming mired in job burnout. We thereby posited:

H3: PsyCap acts as a moderator in teaching-research conflict and job burnout among

Chinese university teachers.

Until now, no empirical study has examined PsyCap as a mediator or moderator in the teaching-research conflict and job burnout among university teachers. Therefore, to a certain extent, by addressing the research gap, the present study should advanced the understanding of the mechanism underlying teachers’ burnout, and thus helped us to carry out corresponding intervention.

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3 Method

3.1 Participants and procedure

Potential survey participants were faculty members except department heads (i.e., supervisors) of three large universities which all belong to the 985 project in China.

Given university teachers’ flexible work schedules and unfixed work places, following Li (2014), this study adopted the convenience sampling to collect data.

Specifically, undergraduate students were recruited for collecting the data related to this research. They distributed 550 paper-based questionnaires to a convenience sample of faculty teachers of the three large universities just mentioned. Informed consent was received from each participants, hence all participants completed the survey on a voluntary basis. The completed questionnaires were returned back to the recruited undergraduate students. No incentive was offered to the participants in the study. Notably, 61 questionnaires were either incomplete or showed certain response set and thus were later eliminated. Finally, 489 usable questionnaires remained with a response rate of 88.91%. Of the remaining sample, 354 (72.39%) were female, and 135 (27.61%) were male; 58 (11.86%) were professors, 201 (41.10%) were vice professors, and 163 (33.33%) were lectures, and 67 (13.70%) were teaching assistants;

the age ranged from 27 to 54 years (M = 33.50, SD = 6.12); and the teaching years fluctuated from 2 to 27 years (M = 11.34, SD = 4.58).

3.2 Measures

3.2.1 Teaching-Research Conflict

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Teaching-research conflict was assessed with a 10-item scale adapted from Ryan’s (2008) Teacher-Coach Role Conflict Scale (T/C-RCS). Items were responded on a Likert-7 scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Higher scores indicate higher levels of teach-research role conflict. The Cronbach’s α was 0.78 in the present study .

3.2.2 Job Burnout

Job burnout was measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (2nd ed.) (MBI-ES) (Maslach & Jackson, 1993). The MBI-ES consists of 22 items belonging to three subscales: Emotional Exhaustion (EE, 9 items, α = .87), Depersonalization (DP, 7 items, α = .76), and (reduced) Personal Accomplishment (PA, 8 items, α = .82). Items were rated on the frequency with which feelings are experienced from 0 (never) to 6 (every day). High scores in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and low scores in personal accomplishment imply a high level of burnout.

3.2.3 Perceived Supervisor Support

Following Eisenberger (2001), we adapted 6 items from the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS) to measure perceived supervisor support, replacing the word “organization” with “supervisor”. The items were rated on a Likert-5 scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The Cronbach’s α in the present study was 0.84.

3.2.4 Psychological Capital

The Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ) was employed to assess teachers’

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psychological capital (Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007). The PCQ comprises 24 items, including four subscales: hope, resilience, optimism, and efficacy (each subscale with 6 items). Items were responded on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). In this study, the Cronbach’s α was 0.86 for overall PCQ (.81, .83, .78, 0.84 for the subscales, respectively).

3.2.5 Control Variables

Based on the previous literature (Charoensukmongko et al., 2016; Li et al., 2015), we chose gender, age and professional title as control variables.

3.3 Translation

Given the the participants were all Chinese, the above measures were all turned into Chinese version through the translation and back-translation procedures.

3.4 Statistical Analysis

The present study used the SPSS19.0 to process the data. The statistical methods mainly involved descriptive statistics and hierarchical regression.

3.5 Test of Common Method Variance (CMV)

Despite of the use of anonymous method and the reverse expression of some items, the common method variance (CMV) might be still an issue (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003), thus the Harman’s single-factor test was conducted. The test resulted in a multiple-factor structure with the first factor only accounting for 24.58%

of the total variance, suggesting that CMV did not matter in this study (Podsakoff &

Organ, 1986).

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4 Results

4.1 Descriptive Analyses

The means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations between the study variables are shown in Table 1. Teaching-research conflict positively correlated with emotional exhaustion (EE) and depersonalization (DP), but did not significantly correlate with personal accomplishment. Both PSS and PsyCap showed a negative correlation with emotional exhaustion (EE) and depersonalization (DP). However, PSS did not significantly correlated with personal accomplishment, while PsyCap was positively associated with personal accomplishment (PA).

(Here inserts Table 1) 4.2 Hypotheses Testing

To test the three hypotheses, the hierarchical regression analysis was adopted. In the analysis process, the dependent variables were EE, DP and PA while the independent variable was teaching-research conflict. Both PSS and PsyCap were treated as potential moderators. Just as mentioned earlier, gender, age and professional title were control variables. The results of regression analysis were presented in Table 2, 3, and 4. After controlling for gender, age and professional title, teaching-research conflict (TRC) positively predicted EE (β = .37, p < .001) and DP (β = .26, p < .001), but negatively predicted PA (β = -.12, p < .01), which supported the H1. When the interaction items TRC × PSS and TRC × PsyCap were added to the above model, both of these interaction items negatively predicted EE (β= -.17, p < .001; β= -.20, p < .001;

respectively) and DP (β= -.12, p < .01; β= -.16, p < .001; respectively). However, only

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TRC × PsyCap positively predicted PA (β = .12, p > .01), while TRC × PSS did not significantly predicted PA (β = .03, ns). Furthermore, according to the recommendations of Aiken and West (1991), in order to illustrate the moderating effects more specifically and visually, the simple slope analysis was conducted. The results showed that at low levels of PSS (M − 1SD), teaching-research conflict positively predicted EE (bsimple slope = .262, t = 4.83, p < .001) and DP (bsimple slope

= .224, t = 4.46, p < .001); while at high levels of PSS (M + 1SD), teaching-research conflict still positively predicted EE (bsimple slope = .143, t = 3.53, p < .01) and DP (bsimple slope = .125, t = 3.27, p < .01); however, the effects weakened by a large margin.

Meanwhile, in terms of PsyCap, at low levels of PsyCap (M − 1SD), teaching-research conflict positively predicted EE (bsimple slope = .322, t = 5.28, p

< .001) and DP (bsimple slope = .254, t = 4.72, p < .001), but negatively predict PA (bsimple slope = -.097, t = 2.682, p < .01). However, at high levels of PsyCap (M + 1SD), teaching-research conflict did not significantly predicted EE (bsimple slope = .016, t = 1.24, ns), DP (bsimple slope = .014, t = 1.17, ns), and PA (bsimple slope = .021, t = 1.565, ns).

Therefore, H2 was partially supported and H3 was fully supported.

(Here inserts Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4) 5 Discussion

Addressing the research gap, based on the literature review, this study introduced PSS and PsyCap into the model of teaching-research conflict and job burnout, attempting to examine the former two as moderators. As expected, teaching-research conflict was positively linked to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal

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accomplishment among Chinese university teachers. Furthermore, both PSS and PsyCap interacted with teaching-research conflict to alleviate teachers’ job burnout.

5.1 Theoretical Implications

Firstly, the present study found that teaching-research conflict positively predicted teachers’ emotional exhaustion and depersonalization while negatively predicting their personal accomplishment. This indicates that teaching-research conflict drains energy and enthusiasm, damages interpersonal relationships, and also reduces perception of accomplishment. These findings support the JD-R model. According to this model, teaching-research conflict can be viewed as a job demand, which requires individuals to consume time, energy, emotion, and other resources such as hope, confidence, and social support (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Given that the resources are usually limited, it is not easy for a teacher to act the two roles of teaching and researching in tandem. In this case, they have to juggle the two roles, and the job demand-resource balance easily breaks, thus leading to job burnout.

Secondly, through the introduction of PSS into the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout, the results further revealed that PSS moderated the effects of teaching-research conflict on both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Specifically, compared to individuals with low PSS, individuals with high PSS experienced relatively lower levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. As university teachers, they have to juggle both the teacher and the researcher roles, inevitably experiencing teaching-research conflict, which easily results in job burnout over time. However, the severity of burnout among teachers

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might not be identical due to their different resources. As a typical external resource, PSS includes not only concrete support such as economic and behavioral support, but also affective and spiritual support (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). Teaching-research conflict is an important stressor, which easily leads teachers to negative outcomes such as emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. However, PSS can act as an effective buffer, thus reducing the effects of teaching-research conflict on job burnout, particularly in affective and spiritual aspects. It is worth noting that this study did not find an interactional effect between teaching-research conflict and PSS, which indicates although PSS can mitigate teachers’ feeling of fatigue and facilitate them to treat others more kindly, it cannot substantially improve their perception of accomplishment. It is likely that high levels of perception of accomplishment mainly depend on teachers’ internal rather than external resources.

This study also found that PsyCap moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict note only on both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but also on personal accomplishment. Specifically, at low levels of PsyCap, teaching-research conflict significantly predicted all the three dimensions of job burnout while at high levels of PsyCap, teaching-research conflict did not significantly predicted any dimension of job burnout. According to the JD-R model, both PSS and PsyCap can be viewed as a job resource to meet the job demands, buffering the adverse effects of job stressor. It is worth noting that in this study, compared to PSS, PsyCap more strongly moderated the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout. Just as discussed earlier, although PSS can moderate the effects of teaching-research conflict on

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emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, it can not significantly buffer the negative effect of teaching-research conflict on personal accomplishment. This may be because PSS is a social resource which weakly influence individual’s motivation and self-evaluation. In contrast, as an important psychological resource, PsyCap is strongly associated with individual’s internal motivation and self-evaluation.

Particularly, as one of the four core components, self-efficacy directly involves individual’s behavioral expectation and self-confidence. Therefore, compared to PSS, PsyCap more strongly influences self-evaluation, positively predicting a personal accomplishment.

In sum, the present study not only empirically supports the JD-R model, which claims that job demands and job resources interact to influence job burnout, but also extend the current literature through exploring how individual’s external and internal resources, i.e., PSS and PsyCap mitigate the adverse effects of teaching-research conflict on job burnout, thus advancing our understanding of the mechanism of role-conflict on job burnout.

5.2 Practical Implications

According to the findings, when university teachers struggle with teaching and research, they easily experience emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment. Universities thereby should clearly realize the seriousness of teaching-research conflict, and try to find ways of alleviating the adverse effects of this role conflict on job burnout. For example, university administrators can take job redesign into account. The teachers with heavy workloads in research should be

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allowed to work at a pace they prefer, and the teaching tasks they burden should be reduced accordingly. If the teaching tasks indeed need more teachers to burden, hiring guest teachers should be a feasible idea that should be considered. In addition, redesigning the performance evaluation system should also be a remedy to mitigate teaching-research conflict (Ladd, 1979). For instance, the reward system should not focus largely on teaching if the university wants to become a research university that seeks to foster scientific innovations. Correspondingly, university teachers should adjust their expectations and efforts to make role-conflict less likely.

Regarding the findings that PSS buffered the adverse effects of teaching-research conflict on teachers’ emotions and attitudes in the work place, administrators of faculties and sectors should be concerned with what teachers really need and value.

They should seek to make teachers perceive to be supported by the administrators, and thus facilitating their sense of obligation that is reciprocated by greater work engagement. It is important for administrators to ensure teachers benefit in various forms like teaching subsidies, rewards for their contributions, holiday welfare, and opportunities of being selected as advanced or excellent individuals. Besides, given the significance of training and promotion, if administrators can provide teachers with good training platforms and fair opportunity of promotion, teachers will feel that they are treated sincerely and fairly, thus perceiving great support from their supervisors.

According to Herzberg’s theory of two factors of motivation, salary, welfare, working conditions, organizational policies, leadership level, safety measures and interpersonal relations are all hygiene factors, which are all related with working environment and

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can facilitate in eliminating employees’ dissatisfaction, but can not directly motivate workers (Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959). In knowledge-intensive organizations, with the fierce market competition, knowledge-based employees with high achievement orientation value potential development, pursuit of meaningful life and self actualization more and more. Therefore, administrators of faculties and sectors should pay more attention to building a good work environment, offering teachers more assistance, exploring and cultivating their interests and needs, managing to meet their high level needs, thus facilitating their value realization.

Furthermore, in view of the finding that PsyCap moderated the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout among university teachers, in order to conduct intervention with burnout among university teachers, it is clear that to conduct intervention with burnout, it should be a feasible way for university administrators to foster and develop university teachers’ PsyCap. In the last few decades, with dramatically increasing popularization of on-line approaches to deliver training, education, consulting and interventions, the effectiveness of these virtual approaches has been examined by many researchers. The results from a meta-analysis of the related studies have indicated that web-based instructions may be as effective as or more effective than traditional face-to-face instruction. Such results provide support for the use of on-line intervention of PsyCap. Following Seligman and colleagues’ call for the advancement of positive interventions in clinical applications (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005), Luthans and colleagues (2008) engage in the on-line training intervention of PsyCap. Their hard work has brought a gratifying

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harvest, and the short web-based training intervention has been considered an effective approach to to foster employees’ PsyCap. Considering the fact that previous intervention studies of PsyCap were mainly carried out in business contexts or academic classrooms, it should be valuable for researchers to explore how to develop teachers’ PsyCap in some user-friendly and effective ways integrating the on-line and face-to-face approaches.

5.3 Limitations and Future Research

Although this study provided us with unique insights into teacher burnout in the higher education context, several limitations must be acknowledged. Firstly, the data were collected from self-report, thus the risk of CMV was faced. Despite our efforts to reduce CMV and the results of Harman’s single-factor test showing that CMV was not an issue, follow-up research had better collect data from multiple sources to minimize CMV. Secondly, the relative small sample size limits the representativeness of the sample and the generalization of the findings. Thus follow-up research should use a large of sample size to achieve more reliable results.

5.4 Conclusions

Based on the JD-R model, this study examined the relationship between teaching-research conflict and job burnout and the moderating role of PSS and PsyCap. The results showed that teaching-research conflict was positively linked to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but negatively linked to personal accomplishment. Furthermore, PSS moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict on both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but did not act as a moderator in

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the relationship between teaching-research conflict and personal accomplishment while PsyCap moderated the effect of teaching-research conflict on all the three dimensions of job burnout.

Acknowledgments

We authors are very grateful to the undergraduates who were recruited for collecting the data.

Ethics statement

Ethical clearance for this research has been granted from the appropriate institutional committee.

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