The Relationship Between the Dark Triad Personality Traits, Motivation at Work, and Burnout Among HR Recruitment Workers

Abstract

We focus on the Dark Triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) and their relationships to the mechanisms of motivation and level of burnout that people experience at work. From the motivational perspective, the needs associated with the Dark Triad traits might be satisfied in work environments by selecting different goals or motives. Moreover, the selection of different goals and motives may be related to the level of burnout syndrome that some people develop. We use the Short Dark Triad Personality Test, Barbuto’s Motivation Sources Inventory, and Oldenburg Burnout Inventory to measure triad traits, preferred work motives, and level of burnout, respectively. The results show that in general, some part of the relationship between the Dark Triad traits and burnout is mediated by the motivational sources. As expected, the Dark Triad traits are more closely related to external sources of motivation (especially instrumental motivation), which are in turn partly associated with higher levels of burnout. The results also suggest that the trajectory of the relationship between the Dark Triad traits and burnout via motivation sources is different from expected, presenting a background for discussion.

The Relationship between Recruiter Burnout, Work Engagement and Turnover Intention: Evidence from Serbia

“…Since human resource professionals' jobs, according to Niehouse (1981), primarily involve taking care of people and their problems, he concludes that they are prime candidates for suffering from burnout. Recruitment specialists have a particularly challenging job in comparison to other HR professionals since their daily duties require satisfaction of the different expectations of various groups of people, including clients/managers and candidates (Prusik & Szulawski, 2019). Their emotional investments into numerous contacts, for example through interviews, may lead to emotional exhaustion and make them susceptible to burnout syndrome (Prusik & Szulawski, 2019;Ratcliff, 1988).…”

“…Recruitment specialists have a particularly challenging job in comparison to other HR professionals since their daily duties require satisfaction of the different expectations of various groups of people, including clients/managers and candidates (Prusik & Szulawski, 2019). Their emotional investments into numerous contacts, for example through interviews, may lead to emotional exhaustion and make them susceptible to burnout syndrome (Prusik & Szulawski, 2019;Ratcliff, 1988). In addition, ''as the point of entry for employees, the recruitment function plays a critical role in enhancing organizational survival and success in the extremely competitive and turbulent business environment'' (Singh & Finn, 2003, p.395).…”

“…To our knowledge, the only study dealing with recruiters burnout is ''The Relationship Between the Dark Triad Personality Traits, Motivation at Work, and Burnout Among HR Recruitment Workers'' (Prusik & Szulawski, 2019), published in June, 2019, and conducted in Germany -a country which, according to the authors belongs in a group of so-called "WEIRD" countries (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic) -an acronym that serves as a descriptor for the participants' setting (Haidt, 2012). Prusik & Szulawski (2019) comment that pan-cultural aspects of such settings of their study cannot be denied and are worthy of being investigated in the future. From this, we might infer that this very setting may provide some of the explanations of Germany's lower burnout rates in comparison to Serbia's in this years' Stada health report.…”

“…To our knowledge there are only few studies investigating burnout among HR professionals (e.g. Santos et al, 2015;Santos et al, 2016;Mustafa et al, 2016;Mustafa et al, 2014), but only one focusing on recruiters (Prusik & Szulawski, 2019). The majority of burnout literature that include HR professionals deals with their practices used for preventing and reducing burnout of other employees (e.g.…”

The role of Dark Triad on the link between Emotional Labor and Core Burnout

“…In contrast to the Big Five Model, the Dark Triad framework presents the negative aspects of human personality (Jonason & Middleton, 2015). While the literature examining the Dark Triad traits is abundant, few studies focus on the relationship between these traits and occupational health (Prusik & Szulawski, 2019). Current research provides compelling evidence for the association among the three components of the Dark Triad and burnout.…”