ABSTRACT
In reviewing everything we have learned about professional burnout during the last 15 years, is there a single, underlying theme that emerges? Given how large and varied the research literature on burnout has become, it’s not clear that one theme can tie it all together. Yet the very diversity of the work demands that we make some attempt to develop a unifying conception. A particularly good candidate for such a unifying conception is the concept of self-efficacy. It is not a new concept in psychology. But most writing and research on burnout has not explicitly recognized this conceptual link between burnout and self-efficacy. This is unfortunate, because linking burnout with self-efficacy can point to some valuable new directions for research, theory, and action on burnout in the future, as Leiter (1990a) recently suggested.
