El papel de los funerales entre los Cucapá

From the preceding literature review, more of what we know about burnout in aid workers is limited to either expatriate working in host countries than to national employees in their own countries. Moreover, the focus of the research has been more on stress in general than in burnout specifically. In other cases, the focus has been on conflict countries like Sudan and Kosovo, but not contexts where there is absence of military conflict. These settings have no military conflicts but grapple with other stressful issues in their humanitarian space.

Where burnout has been studied in aid workers, it has been related to environmental, organisational and job factors-such factors as workload, role ambiguity, job satisfaction and other related factors, but not to personal factors. Research, however, takes note of personal factors like emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence and coping ability in stress and burnout, but these factors have not been combined to check on the relationship with burnout in aid workers. Where personal factors were considered, these were limited to personality, hardiness, and social support.

The critical theory in burnout research is one by Maslach and Leiter, (1997) which focuses on three factors of burnout, namely emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and diminished personal accomplishment. These variables have been related to various factors across a broad spectrum of locations, but not specifically with emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence and coping ability to aid workers. Regarding coping, Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping, and Bandura’s (1992) self-efficacy theories are dominant. When it comes to EI, three dominant perspectives exist according to focus, that is, on ability, on trait or on both. For this research, the trait approach was taken because of its utility in the research in question. David King’s (2008) theory of spiritual intelligence, a relatively newly identified intelligence, was taken because of the way it lends itself to the understanding of the broader concept of coping and meaning in burnout research.

While there is general agreement among researchers in aid worker burnout on the causes of stress, its symptoms, and remedies, different prescriptions are proffered due to different focus areas. One group of researchers tend to focus on expatriates and what they emphasise more is deployment, tenure, and post-deployment of aid workers from foreign locations. While this has been the mainstream focus, in reality, there are more aid workers in-country than the

147

expatriates up to a differential of 90%, due to obvious reasons of budgets, scale, skills and so forth. As such, the emphasis on just 10% of the aid worker population for understanding burnout is inadequate. A holistic approach is necessary. Another group of researchers focuses just on local aid workers. Again, recommendations coming from such research may be limited regarding applicability, as the two groups of aid workers experience stress from different points of view. A balanced view will draw from both worlds, and the interaction between the two groups as part of the burnout stems from the unequal treatment of the two groups.

Though previous research has tried to explore emotional intelligence on burnout in helping professions like nursing, teaching and the police, there have been limitations regarding SI, CA, and EI and how these relate to burnout in aid workers. An attempt has been made to link religion and spirituality with coping, but these were limited regarding subjects of burnout. Aid workers are unique in the sense that meaning plays an essential role in their coping with burnout.

Most burnout studies have been cross-sectional with a few longitudinal ones extending for just a year. This is due to the nature of the humanitarian industry, which is characterised by short assignments. The current research focuses on both expats and locals regarding burnout especially. It tries to relate personal factors of CA, EI, and SI which seem to have been neglected in focus on the environment, organisational and job factors as well as variables like personality. Moreover, the study looks at socio-demographic factors like age, nature of employment, gender, and length of service as essential variables in the aid worker burnout equation.

Insights from this research are likely to improve our understanding of burnout even amongst local humanitarian aid workers hence recommendations on handling stress and enhancing coping. In the same way, the study aids recruitment of aid workers for different environments in line with stress levels from pre-employment measures of EI, SI, and CA. The deployment will be useful as critical factors are taken into account before hiring and placement. At a theoretical level, the research study would add value with regards to shedding light on the relationship between EI, SI, CA, and burnout in general and in aid workers in particular.

148

Given that the key variables of spiritual intelligence, emotional intelligence and coping ability have been explored, the next section considers biographical characteristics that are important in burnout.