Investigating the Role of Occupational Burnout on the Relationship between Stress and Job Performance of Auditors

Stress and occupational burnout are of occupational hazards, which have been taken into consideration in recent years. Hence, the present research by looking forward to cover this dimension of the audit knowledge examines the effects of job stress on auditor's performance according to the mediating effect of occupational burnout. This study is of a cross-correlation type which its statistical population consist of all auditors working in audit firms in Iran such as Audit Organization in the year 2014. And the sample of the research includes 213 observations selected from this population. The applied tool in this research has been consisted of a combination of three questionnaires in the field of job stress, occupational burnout, and job performance. The data were analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling and Pearson correlation coefficient by using SPSS Software Version 21, Amos Version 21, and Excel Version 2010. The results of the research indicate that there is a relationship between job stress, occupational burnout, and job performance. In other words, the results approve that there is a positive and significant relationship between job stress and occupational burnout, and also they confirm that there is a negative and significant relationship between occupational burnout and job performance of auditors. Moreover, it is proved that there is a negative relationship between job stress and job performance via the mediator variable of occupational burnout. The existence of a relationship between job stress, occupational burnout, and job performance suggests that promoting performance is one of the positive consequences of decreasing stress and occupational burnout. Therefore, according to the important role of stress and occupational burnout on the performance of auditors, it is suggested that by decreasing the factors of job stressor in the working environment, the requirements for performance promotion, quality improvement, and at last, an increase of the credit of accounting society is provided.