Reactions to Incongruency: Job Expectations and Reality

Abstract

Burnout of employees has been a major concern of researchers in management for a number of years. Much of the work, however, has tended to concentrate on professional people rather than employees with various level of skills. This present research studies the employees of a major local government in Western Australia comparing several suggested outcomes. The results suggest that failure to achieve expectations causes occupational stress and low job satisfaction. These outcomes appear to cause the sufferers to exhibit the classic symptoms of burnout, such as irritability and misdirected anger. One way to reduce these problems, it is suggested, is to introduce participative management.

Citation

Savery, L.K. (1988), "Reactions to Incongruency: Job Expectations and Reality", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 8-12. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb004436