How exhausting!? Social network ties, structural position and emotional exhaustion.

We draw on social influence in organizations (social learning, social comparison, and social information processing) to argue that employees will report similar levels of emotional exhaustion to those of workflow, friendship and advice ties as well as structural equivalents (employees who are connected to a similar set of coworkers). We tested our hypotheses among 91 employees working for a construction company in the United States. Employees had similar levels of emotional exhaustion to coworkers with whom they had workflow ties, advice ties, and structurally equivalent network positions. In-degree (but not out-degree) friendship ties were significantly related to similarity in emotional exhaustion. Our work (1) demonstrates that network ties and structural position are important to emotional exhaustion; (2) shows that the content of ties matters to emotional similarity; and (3) is able to consider the direction of influence because it considers both self (out-degree) and other (in-degree) reported ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]