The Effect of Punitive Supervision on Job Burnout Through Serial Mediation of Organizational Injustice and Work Alienation
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Abstract
Background/Problem: Job burnout is a critical and costly issue among frontline hospitality employees, often intensified by destructive leadership styles such as punitive supervision. While the detrimental link between punitive supervision and burnout is established, the precise cascading psychological mechanism—a key focus for theoretical refinement—remains underexplored within behavioral Science.
Objective/Purpose: Based on the Conservation of Resources (COR) and Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theories, this study examines how punitive supervision impacts job burnout through the sequential mediation of organizational injustice and work alienation.
Design and Methodology: Data were collected from frontline employees working in 4- and 5-star hotels in Egypt using a survey-based design. The responses of 306 participants were analyzed with the PROCESS macro, allowing for the examination of both direct and serial indirect effects
Results: The findings indicate that punitive supervision is a significant predictor of job burnout. Organizational injustice and work alienation sequentially mediate this relationship, suggesting that employees subjected to punitive supervision perceive unfair treatment, experience alienation, and consequently exhibit higher burnout. These results confirm that both organizational-behavioral and psycho-social mechanisms contribute to understanding burnout in hospitality contexts.
Conclusion and Implications: The study highlights the negative consequences of punitive supervision on frontline hotel employees and emphasizes the importance of fairness and engagement-enhancing practices. Managers should adopt supportive supervision, transparent policies, and interventions that reduce employee alienation to enhance well-being, mitigate burnout, and improve overall organizational performance.
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