STRUCTURAL MODELLING OF BURNOUT AND JOB CRAFTING IN START-UP EMPLOYEES

Abstract

Startup contexts with high levels of uncertainty, demanding workloads, and rapid scaling create fertile grounds for occupational burnout. This paper examines the psychological relationship between burnout syndromes—emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal efficacy—and proactive job crafting, specifically task, relational, and cognitive reframing behaviors among startup employees. Guided by the Conservation of Resources theory and the Job Demands—Resources (JD-R) framework, we create and validate a structural equation model (SEM) of the latent relationships among the constructs using psychometric data from 204 employees in early-stage ventures from multiple sectors. While burnout symptoms appear to be widespread, particularly among product development and operations employees, job crafting acts as a resilience mechanism and mediates and buffers the psychological impact of work stressors. The structural model confirms significant inverse path coefficients between burnout and all three forms of job crafting, illustrating that self-initiated role redesign enhances perceived control and emotional recovery. This study advances the theoretical and practical understanding of the emerging mental sustainability in entrepreneurial ecosystems by identifying distinct burnout archetypes and modeling their association with personal agency in job design. The results highlight the gaps in specifically tailored psychological interventions for startups that promote autonomy, self-regulation, and job redesign.