Thesis

inadequate return of resources from colleagues and supervisors. According to Hobfoll (2001)
the first threat to a person’s resources is viewed as a stressor, however it is the continuation of
the threat to a person’s resources which might lead to burnout. It is especially a vast amount
of resources invested in a person’s work which might work as continued stress and lead to
burnout. Thus, the COR model of burnout is looking beyond the concept of stressing order to
understand the way in which chronic stress might develop into the burnout syndrome.
According to Leiter (1993) a main idea behind the COR model is the idea that job demands
and job resources are predicting the burnout and the burnout’s three factors in different ways.
A reason for this is partly because of the different psychological experiences connected to the
concepts of loss and gain. In general it is said that individuals are trying harder to avoid loss
than achieving gains, which means that demands will to a higher degree lead to burnout than
resources are likely to protect against burnout. Lee & Ashforth (1996) conducted a meta-
analysis of burnout which verifies the above mentioned idea. They found that factors
connected to job demands, like for example work overload, were more significantly related to
emotional exhaustion and burnout than resource factors, like for example social support.
These researchers also found that demand factors were less connected to depersonalization
and personal accomplishment, and that the resource factors were more significantly related to
depersonalization and personal accomplishment.
Also other researchers (see for example Brotheridge & Lee, 2002) have used the COR model
to look into the phenomenon of burnout and their studies have supported the COR model.
Halbesleben & Bowler (2005, in Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004) have for example also used
the COR model of burnout in order to expand the connection between burnout and job
performance. These two researchers said that the best way to understand the connection
between burnout and job performance is to look at the investment in the resources. When
doing this, the researchers demonstrated that nurses being more exhausted showed decreased
job performance, however these nurses were more probable to take part in organizational
collegial behaviours. This finding proposes that these nurses invested fewer resources into
their jobs and while they distanced themselves from the job demands, they were focusing their
resources in the direction of beneficial collegial support. Halbesleben & Bowler (op. cit.)
argued that the nurses use of collegial support was done in order for them to increase their
feelings of social support and thus to decrease their risk of burnout.