Date

10-14-2026

Department

School of Behavioral Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)

Chair

Amy McDonald Stevens

Keywords

Burnout, working mothers, servant leadership, perceived organizational support, job performance

Disciplines

Psychology

Abstract

Working mothers frequently navigate competing work and family demands that increase vulnerability to burnout and may affect job performance. Despite these challenges, working mothers remain underrepresented in organizational research examining burnout and performance outcomes. Limited studies have explored how perceived organizational support (POS) and servant leadership influence the burnout-performance relationship across the individual dimensions of burnout. This quantitative correlational study examined the relationships between burnout and job performance among working mothers in the United States and tested whether POS and servant leadership moderated these relationships individually and jointly. The sample included 86 full-time working mothers recruited through convenience and snowball sampling. Participants completed an anonymous Qualtrics survey using validated measures of burnout, POS, servant leadership, and job performance. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted. Emotional exhaustion and cynicism were significantly associated with lower job performance, whereas professional efficacy was positively associated with job performance. POS and servant leadership did not independently moderate these relationships; however, their combined presence significantly moderated the relationship between cynicism and job performance. These findings underscore the importance of examining burnout as a multidimensional construct and suggest that multiple organizational resources may jointly shape the burnout-performance relationship among working mothers.

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