The Mediating Role of Job Burnout in the Relationship between Role Conflict and Job Performance: An Empirical Research of Hotel Frontline Service Employees in China

As an increasingly fierce competition in hospitality industry?the service quality of frontline service employeesdetermine the success of hotels. Therefore, it is significant to improve the service quality of frontline serviceemployees by enhancing their job performance. According to the conservation of resources theory, frontlineservice employees are easily confronted with role conflicts, which result in job burnout and negatively influencejob performance. However, the relationship between “role conflict-burnout-job performance†is not consistentaccording to previous studies. Motivated by the theoretical concern to further understanding of this subject, thepurpose of this article is to explore whether role conflict will affect job performance through job burnout. Basedon the data of 189 frontline service employees from 18 budget hotels, this study tests the hypotheses. The resultsshow that- (1) Role conflict is positively related to burnout; (2) Both role conflict and burnout are negativelyrelated to job performance; (3) Burnout partially mediated the relationship between role conflict and jobperformance. Implications for practices are discussed.