Mobbing, burnout, and religious coping styles among Protestant clergy

This study investigates the relationship between mobbing, burnout, and religious coping styles among Protestant clergy. Mobbing is an emotionally abusive workplace behavior and is defined as the prolonged malacious harassment of a coworker by a group of other members of an organization to secure the removal from the organization of the one who is targeted. Mobbing has only recently become a focus of attention in the US. To date, there are no known studies investigating mobbing in the workplace setting of the church. The broad purpose of this study is to determine if Protestant pastors experience mobbing, how they are affected by it, and how they cope with it. Four religious coping styles - Self-directing, Collaborative, Deferring, and Surrender to God - are investigated to determine how coping styles of religious individuals function in mediating the effect of mobbing or burnout. Burnout is assessed throught he Maslach Burnout Inventory and measures emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. This study utilizes Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and presents two models of mediational analysis.... The results of analysis indicate that Protestant clergy do experience being mobbed which results in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Clergy with a self-directing coping style experience more burnout than do those who utilize a surrender to God style. Differences in indirect effects between models were noted. The implications to theory and practice are discussed.