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Top1. Introduction
Emotional exhaustion is a form of work-related stress that many employees experience. Emotional exhaustion, a component of burnout, is a condition in which employees feel exhausted, overextended, and overburdened by work. Extensive research has been conducted on emotional exhaustion’s impact on job performance and organizational functioning (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Jackson et al., 1986; Lam et al., 2010; Maslach, 1982; Zhang et al., 2018). In fact, Maslach and Leiter (2008) assert that “in the research literature on burnout, exhaustion is the most widely reported and the most thoroughly analyzed dimension of this syndrome” (pp. 499). Extant research supports the finding that emotional exhaustion is negatively related to performance (Brady et al., 2020; Halbesleben & Bowler, 2007; Zhao et al., 2019). This research uses the emotional component of burnout because of its consistency in predicting outcomes such as commitment and turnover (Demerouti et al., 2001; Kong & Jeon, 2018; Wright & Cropanzano, 1998). We, however, take a different but complementary approach of studying the inter-relationships among burnout components, specifically depersonalization and work accomplishment.
The crux of the paper is that emotional exhaustion is shown to have a negative effect on organizational performance, both directly and through interactions with depersonalization. Knowledge sharing has been shown to have a positive effect on organizational performance and mitigate some of the negative effects of emotional exhaustion. This topic is especially relevant given the stresses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The pioneering work of Maslach (1982) has created a vast platform for research on emotional exhaustion. Researchers focused on a three-component model of burnout advocated by Maslach and Jackson (1986), which consists of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal accomplishment and their impacts on job performance and employee health. For example, some researchers have studied the relationship between emotional exhaustion to find positive effects on emotional display (Lam et al., 2010), and negative effects on service quality, performance and affective delivery (Grandey, 2003; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987; Wright & Cropanzano, 1998).
Because emotional exhaustion has deleterious consequences, it is important to study what organizations do to minimize, if not eliminate, these negative consequences. We argue that one of the ways of managing emotional exhaustion is to focus on ‘knowledge sharing’ so that employees become aware of buy-in to the organizational climate and recognize the nature of work that may induce fatigue. Researchers in the area of information and systems management documented the importance of knowledge management (KM) in educating employees (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). The concept of KM has been widely researched, and organizations tend to focus on identifying, capturing and leveraging knowledge to bring efficiency and effectiveness (Andreeva & Kianto, 2012; Bukowitz &Williams, 1999; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Von Krogh, 1998). Researchers have identified five dimensions of KM, viz., knowledge creation, knowledge storing, knowledge sharing, knowledge accessibility, and knowledge application. In the present research, our focus is on knowledge sharing, which helps employees in organizations become aware of the organizational climate, procedures, protocols, behaviors of peers, behaviors of supervisors and so forth. While the previous research has demonstrated negative consequences of emotional exhaustion and positive consequences of knowledge sharing, there exists gap in research which empirically examines the combined effect of knowledge sharing and emotional exhaustion. The primary objective of the present study is to see how knowledge sharing acts counter to the negative outcomes of emotional exhaustion. This would be a significant contribution to both the literatures on knowledge management and organizational behavior.