Working Overtime in Social Work Settings: Associations with Burnout, Person-organization Value Congruence and Turnover Intentions among Chinese Social Workers

ABSTRACT

Working overtime is one of the risk factors for turnover intention; however, little is known about its mediating and moderating mechanisms, especially among social workers. This study adds to the knowledge through investigating the mediating role of burnout and the moderating role of person-organization value congruence. A sample of 5,930 Chinese social workers (Mean age = 30.4 years old, SD = 7.9) is obtained from the China Social Work Longitudinal Study (CSWLS) 2019. Results illustrate that burnout mediates the relationship between working overtime and turnover intention. Additionally, the direct effect of working overtime on turnover intention is moderated by person-organization value congruence, with the effect being weaker for social workers with high person-organization value congruence than for those with low person-organization value congruence. These findings provide new insights for explaining how working overtime influences turnover intention. Implications for policy and practice are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Working overtime
• burnout
• person-organization value congruence
• turnover intention
• social worker

Acknowledgments

Data used in this study were from the China Social Work Longitudinal Study (CSWLS) 2019 collected by the East China University of Science and Technology. The authors appreciate the assistance in providing data of 2019 CSWLS.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Research ethics approval was received from the institution where the authors are affiliated.

Disclosure statement

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

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Submission declaration

The authors declare that this paper has not been published previously and it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.