This study sought to investigate employee burnout within a post-disaster context by exploring teachers’ burnout perceptions and workplace attitudes in the aftermath of the 2010-2011 Christchurch earthquakes. The study hypothesised that burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion and cynicism) would be related with the extent to which individuals and schools were impacted by the earthquakes, and with the quality of school support for staff and students (i.e., personal disaster impact, school disaster impact and school responsiveness to the disaster), with perceptions of role conflict and role overload, and with turnover intentions. Additionally, a Teacher Burnout Model was proposed whereby emotional exhaustion and cynicism were hypothesised to mediate the relationships between the independent variables (i.e., the disaster-related and role-related variables) and turnover intentions. 125 primary, intermediate and secondary school teachers from the city of Christchurch completed an online survey. Results revealed that high role overload, high role conflict, high school disaster impact, and schools’ ineffective disaster coping responses, were associated with increased levels of emotional exhaustion and cynicism. Although greater impact of earthquakes on teachers’ personal lives was related to higher levels of emotional exhaustion, results revealed a non-significant relationship between personal disaster impact and cynicism. In the Teacher Burnout Model, the relationships between both role stress variables and turnover intentions were mediated by perceptions of emotional exhaustion. This study contributes novel findings to the burnout literature, and provides implications for schools and organisations operating within a disaster context.

This case study has been about the attitudes and values of a group of participants in a specific workplace. The aim has been to try and ascertain if the identified attitudes and values of the participants have had any influence on career development. There were 12 participants involved and at the time of this project they were either in permanent part or full time employment with ‘The Company’. ‘The Company’ is a pseudonym given to the business where the participants worked and the setting for this research project. The workplace is situated in a remote location on an industrial work site in New Zealand. Each participant engaged in the research voluntarily. They completed a questionnaire and took part in a semi-structured interview. Confidentiality and anonymity of all participants had been respected and maintained throughout the entire project. Results show that there were three principle influences that could be attributed to the ways that participants perceived the workplace and personal career development. They were workplace values, workplace training, and workplace goals. These attributes are influenced in different ways and hold divergent meaning for individual participants. The most highly rated value, as identified by participants in this project has been variation of tasks undertaken in the workplace. This was not challenged by any of the indicators used to consider opinions and values expressed by participants; education, generational groupings, career type and work streams. Seven of the twelve participants desired promotion within ‘The Company’. The ways that participants hoped to achieve promotion was often unspecified. Participants did not articulate specific planning methods. Future research is recommended such as focusing on how employees can develop career goals that fit with the goals of their workplace.

Detta kandidatarbete i psykologi undersöker motstånd mot förändringar på arbetsplatsen med fokus på cynism gentemot förändringar genom en jämförande studie mellan svenska offentliga organisationer och en tidigare genomförd australiensisk studie. Studien använder begreppet cynism för att analysera medarbetarnas attityder gentemot förändringar och utforskar dess två underdimensioner: pessimism och dispositionell tillskrivning. Studien visar på att det finns en skillnad mellan det svenska och det australienska urvalet, där det svenska urvalet är mer cyniskt inställt gentemot förändringar än det australiensiska. Däremot identifierar studien inte att det finns en skillnad mellan personer med högre utbildningsnivå jämfört med lägre utbildningsnivå eller med personer med mer arbetlivserfarenhet jämfört med lägre arbetslivserfarenhet rörande hur cyniska de är gentemot förändringar på arbetsplatsen. / This undergraduate thesis in psychology explores resistance to changes in the workplace, focusing on cynicism towards changes through a comparative study between Swedish public organisations and a previously conducted Australian study. The study utilises the concept of cynicism to analyse employees' attitudes towards changes and explores its two sub-dimensions: pessimism and dispositional attribution. The study indicates that there is a difference between the Swedish and Australian samples, where the Swedish sample is more cynical towards changes than the Australian one. However, the study does not identify a difference between individuals with higher levels of education compared to those with lower levels of education, or among individuals with more working life experience compared to those with less working life experience in terms of how cynical they are towards workplace changes. Keywords: