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Top1. Introduction
The World Health Organization defines burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed,” characterizing this occupational phenomenon using three dimensions: “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion,” “increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job,” and “reduced professional efficacy” (www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/burn-out/en/). The first dimension, emotional exhaustion, has been considered a key element of job-induced burnout, which is a stress-related response to the enormous emotional requirement demanded by an organization to enhance organizational performance.
Emotional exhaustion is detrimental to the health of workers because it makes them feel drained and decreases their enthusiasm and passion (Heuven et al., 2006; Hsieh, 2014; Maslach, 1982; McCarthy, Trougakos, & Cheng, 2016; Tuxford & Bradley, 2015). Especially in human services, jobs generally demand a considerable proportion of emotional labor that requires the regulation of one’s emotions in accordance with organizational display roles (Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 1983; Refaeli & Shutton, 1989). Public agencies are also fashioned to have face-to-face or voice-to-voice engagements with citizens during service. With a recent (technology-supported) transition from traditional to interactive mode in citizen-government relationships, emotional labor is fundamental to appropriate operations of public service delivery (Golembiewski, 1996; Guy, Newman, & Mastracci, 2014; Hsieh & Guy, 2009; Hsieh, Yang, & Fu, 2012; Jin & Guy, 2009; Meier, Mastracci, & Wilson, 2006; Shin, 2014, 2019). It may increase or decrease emotional exhaustion, depending on the nature of its requirements and the context of the job and the organizational culture (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Barger & Grandey, 2006; Foucreault, Ollier-Malaterre, & Ménard, 2018; Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 1983; Hsieh & Guy, 2009; Huhtala et al., 2015; Nitzsche et al., 2013).
By enabling interactions for expressing and sharing emotions when engaging with citizens, a range of social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp) have become the focus of emotional labor discussion (especially in human services) and are considered as a last resort to relieve stress from emotional labor (Baym, 2015; Duffy & Wissinger, 2017; McCance et al., 2013). Like the two contrasting views on emotional labor, the impact of social media on burnout is positive or negative. Individual employees increasingly use social media for private (personal) or organizational (work-related) purposes. Messaging via social media can provide workmates with an efficient tool for sharing relevant information in a timely manner (Leonardi, Huysman, & Steinfield, 2013; Razmerita, Kirchner, & Nielsen, 2016; Oh & Syn, 2015). Social media use may boost individual productivity by integrating face-to-face interactions and reducing counterproductive work behavior such as absenteeism (Garrett & Danziger, 2008; Landers & Callan, 2014; Robertson & Kee, 2017). In contrast, social media generates adverse effects, which explodes with unfiltered emotional expressions, invades privacy boundaries, and decreases organizational productivity through the dispersion of attention and irrelevant use (Baruah, 2012; Bizzi, 2020; Broughton, Reutens, & Sobey, 2009; Klotz & Buckley, 2013; Yu et al., 2018).
Given this background, this study aims to untangle the relationship between emotional labor and occupational burnout, focusing on the influence of social media use. The following research question is addressed: “How does social media use by public employees influence the relationship between emotional labor and burnout?” To answer this inquiry, this study examines the moderating and mediating effects of public employees’ social media use on that relationship, using data from an online questionnaire survey of 307 public employees in Ghana. The article consists of five sections, including the foregoing introduction. Section 2 reviews previous relevant literature in conceptual, theoretical, and empirical aspects. Section 3 describes the research design. Section 4 reports the results and findings of the statistical analysis. Section 5 discusses the academic and practical implications.