1st Edition

We Still Need to Talk about Burnout

Edited By Elfi Baillien, Toon Taris Copyright 2026
150 Pages
by Routledge

150 Pages
by Routledge

This book critically examines the concept of work burnout, exploring its origins, defining features, and ongoing debates in psychological and organizational research. Burnout is a pervasive phenomenon in contemporary work life, typically characterized by exhaustion, a distant and/or cynical attitude towards work and the people one works with, and a diminished sense of effectiveness at work. It... Read more

Introduction: Is burnout the toll of toil, or masked depression? Future directions in burnout research

Elfi Baillien and Toon Taris

 

1. Beliefs about burnout

Renzo Bianchi and Irvin Sam Schonfeld

 

2. Cherry picking and red herrings creating much ado about nothing: a critique of Bianchi and Schonfeld’s beliefs about burnout

Michael P. Leiter and Arla Day

 

3. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater – while adding the bathtub too: a rejoinder to “Beliefs about burnout” of Bianchi and Schonfeld

Hans De Witte and Wilmar Schaufeli

 

4. Revitalising burnout research

Evangelia Demerouti and Arnold B. Bakker

 

5. Burnout forever

Renzo Bianchi and Irvin Sam Schonfeld

 

6. Burnout Assessment Tool: a reliability generalisation meta-analysis

César Villacura-Herrera, Hedy Acosta-Antognoni, Javiera Maldonado, Fernanda Arriaza, Natalia Cancino-Letelier, Marcelo Nvo-Fernández and Wilmar B. Schaufeli

 

7. Reciprocal relations between emotional exhaustion and episode-specific emotional labour: An experience-sampling study

Hadar Nesher Shoshan, Laura Venz and Sabine Sonnentag

 

8. Materialism predicts burnout through the basic needs: individual-level and within-person longitudinal evidence

Valentina Reyes, Wenceslao Unanue, Vivian L. Vignoles and Anja Van den Broeck

 

 

 

Biography

Elfi Baillien is full professor of Mental and Digital Well-being at KU Leuven’s Faculty of Economics and Business. Her research examines the antecedents, developmental processes, and organizational interventions related to (cyber)harassment and employee (digital) well-being (e.g., cyberstress). Besides publishing widely around these topics, she is committed to bridging the gap between science and practice.

Toon Taris is full professor of Work Psychology at Utrecht University and currently Editor-in-Chief of Work & Stress, a leading scientific journal in occupational health psychology. His primary research interests are burnout, workaholism, and work motivation. He has authored numerous publications on these and related topics.