Structural Empowerment, Burnout, and Job Satisfaction: Comparison of Public and Private Social Service Centers

ABSTRACT

Based on Kanter’s model of power, this research aimed to study burnout as a mediator of the association between structural empowerment and job satisfaction in Spanish social service workers. Data from 177 workers from public centers (sample 1) and 179 workers from private centers (sample 2) were analyzed using path analysis and bootstrapping. Structural empowerment had both a direct and indirect effect, reducing burnout levels, on job satisfaction in both samples. The findings point to the importance of structural empowerment for ensuring the quality of working life of social service professionals from both public and private centers.

KEYWORDS:

• Structural empowerment
• burnout
• job satisfaction
• social service workers
• public centers
• private centers

Practice points

•Work environments that ensure employees have access to resources, information, opportunities, and support are associated with structural empowerment, which has a robust evidence-base supporting its impact on organizational effectiveness and quality of working life (i.e. job satisfaction, burnout).

•This study proposes a model of mediation based on the theory of power in organizations: structural empowerment reduces core burnout and, thus, increases job satisfaction of social service professionals.

•The results observed in two independent samples (workers from public and private centers) show that changes in perceived structural empowerment had direct and indirect effects on changes in core burnout and job satisfaction.

•The findings point to the importance of structural empowerment for ensuring the quality of working life of social service professionals from both public and private centers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).