The Rationale for Picking the Article
The article written by Kim and Lee (2021) revolves around the problem of employees’ emotional exhaustion and its overall impact on the organization. This article was picked because it provided enough detail regarding the significance of employee burnout and outlined the biggest issues that could be met by workers when facing emotional exhaustion. The effects of prolonged workplace stress were studied in numerous environments, contributing to the idea that emotional exhaustion has to be addressed in advance to prevent issues associated with well-being and physical health (Kim & Lee, 2021). Thus, the article was picked due to the fact that the authors also paid attention to the omnipresent impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its long-term consequences. The advent of remote work and work-family conflict placed a completely new burden on the shoulders of managers and employees, who have to experience the unexpected even more often. It was rather interesting to assess Kim and Lee’s (2021) approach to employee burnout because emotional exhaustion is a known hindrance to effective communication and adequate organizational behaviors.
The General Topic
Overall, the topic of the research article written by Kim and Lee (2021) can be outlined as an attempt to develop an integrative model that would take on the existing communicative behaviors and assess the required level of transparency. Therefore, the employee-organization relationship (EOR) was conceptualized in addition to emotional exhaustion to see if transparent communication could mediate organizational issues. The authors also introduced the conservation of resources (COR) theory and ensured that their research would contribute to the current body of evidence on the topic of internal communication (Kim & Lee, 2021). The researchers were inclined to investigate the impact of communicative behaviors on workplace effectiveness and see how transparency could moderate the advent of burnout.
Hypotheses and Research Questions
The following hypotheses were tested by the researchers:
- H1: Employees’ emotional exhaustion is negatively related to their advocative behavior;
- H2: Employees’ emotional exhaustion is positively related to their adversarial behavior;
- H3: EOR mediates the relationship between emotional exhaustion and employees’ advocative behavior;
- H4: EOR mediates the relationship between emotional exhaustion and employees’ adversarial behavior;
- H5: Transparent communication moderates the relationship between employees’ emotional exhaustion and EOR;
- H6: Transparent communication moderates the relationship between employees’ emotional exhaustion and advocative behavior;
- H7: Transparent communication moderates the relationship between employees’ emotional exhaustion and adversarial behavior (Kim & Lee, 2021).
No research questions were highlighted within the framework of this research article.
Methodology
In order to collect the data, Kim and Lee (2021) carried out an online survey. A total of 419 US-based full-time workers completed the survey. The researchers utilized a stratified quota sampling strategy to obtain a representative data set at the end of the research project. Kim and Lee (2021) were interested in obtaining links between emotional exhaustion, communication style, and several personal variables (gender, age, and education level). Each of the questions in the survey was designed in the form of a Likert scale from 1 to 5, where 1 stood for “strongly disagree”, and 5 meant “strongly agree.” In order to test their hypotheses, Kim and Lee (2021) implemented the method of structural equation modeling (SEM). It helped the researchers to measure the statistical significance of the obtained results and see how the new data compared to the existing evidence.
Results
The researchers identified that emotional exhaustion forced employees to display negative communicative behaviors. Even though there were certain organizational factors that could prevent undesirable external attitudes, Kim and Lee (2021) were able to focus on individual predictors of emotional burnout. It was found that internal management had to be held responsible for establishing a positive working environment, especially under the condition of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. An increasing level of stress was found to leave employees emotionally drained and unable to control their communication strategies (Kim & Lee, 2021). This growing challenge was addressed by the researchers rather effectively, as Kim and Lee (2021) were able to identify the ways how managers could predict negative communicative behaviors among employees. The researchers claimed that the majority of negative experiences could be mediated through the interface of consistent feedback and an attractive work-life balance.
Implications of the Findings
First of all, it should be noted that transparent communication is an essential contributor to proper workplace interactions. The implication of this finding is that emotional exhaustion could quickly escalate organizational issues that go beyond an individual’s communication problems or reduced performance. Managers have to track unfavorable relationships and non-transparent communication to ensure that more advocative behaviors are learned by employees. Strategic internal communication should never be affected by adverse behaviors and emotional exhaustion. This finding also creates enough room for a practical implication suggesting that managers are responsible for instilling a culture of transparent communication. Therefore, future practical research is required to see how managers could lead by a positive example and guide employees toward transparent communication and strong decision-making. Organizational relationships have to be based on effective communication because otherwise, leaders would not be able to predict and mediate emotional exhaustion among employees. The lack of strategic communication remains a major threat for most companies because they do not recognize the importance of burnout and its impact on workers.
Reference
Kim, K. H., & Lee, Y. (2021). Employees’ communicative behaviors in response to emotional exhaustion: The moderating role of transparent communication. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 15(5), 410–424. Web.