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International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
Vol. 10, No. 12, 2020, E-ISSN: 22 22 -6990 © 2020 HRMARS
924
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Mediating Role of Boredom in the Workplace on Turnover
Intention: A Proposed Framework
Micheal Teng, Zaiton Hassan, Mark Kasa, Nik Norsyamimi Md Nor, Nur
Fatihah Abdullah Bandar, Rusli Ahmad
To Link this Article: http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v10-i12/8385 DOI:10.6007/IJARBSS/v10-i12/8385
Received: 23 October 2020, Revised: 16 November 2020, Accepted: 28 November 2020
Published Online: 10 December 2020
In-Text Citation: (Teng et al., 2020)
To Cite this Article: Teng, M., Hassan, Z., Kasa, M., Nor, N. N. M., Bandar, N. F. A., & Ahmad, R. (2020).
Mediating role of Boredom in the Workplace on Turnover Intention: A Proposed Framework. International
Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 10(12), 924–938.
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JOURNAL HOMEPAGE
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Mediating role of Boredom in the Workplace on
Turnover Intention: A Proposed Framework
Micheal Teng1, Zaiton Hassan2, Mark Kasa3, Nik Norsyamimi
Md Nor4, Nur Fatihah Abdullah Bandar5, Rusli Ahmad6
1, 2,4,5,6 Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development Universiti Malaysia Sarawak,
94300 Kota Samarahan Sarawak 3 UCSI University Malaysia, Sarawak Campus, 93450
Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
Email: hzaiton@unimas.my
Abstract
Boredom in the workplace is commonly described as one of the negative and widespread
phenomena where its increasing trend can be seen among employees on all occupational
levels. However, the number of investigations performed on the occurrence of boredom in
the eastern countries is limited. This study conceptualizes the causal and consequences of
boredom in the workplace underpinned by the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory.
Subsequently, it postulates that boredom among employees occurs due to work-related
characteristics (i.e.: job demands, job resources) and individual personality traits, as well as
time orientation cultural dimension, which may lead to their turnover intention. Furthermore,
several hypotheses are proposed in this study. This paper provides several empirical
contributions by highlighting the tendency of boredom to occur in the workplace which may
leads to the turnover intention. By determining its antecedents, boredom in the workplace
can be curbed and the turnover intention can be prevented in a more practical way.
Keywords: Boredom in the Workplace, Job Demand Resources Theory, The Turnover
Intention, Personality
Introduction
Since, four decades ago, boredom in the workplace has been identified as an
important, but neglected, issue in organizational research (Fisher, 1994; Loukidou et al., 2009;
Krasniqiet al., 2019). Although sounds simplistic, boredom at workplace has been identified
by International Labor Office (ILO) Geneva on Stress at Work Prevention Checkpoints that
alternative tasks should be provided to employees to prevent boredom. Moreover,
Department of Occupational Safety and Health, Ministry of Human Resources Malaysia has
identified boredom as one of the contributing factors to drugs and alcohol abuse among
employees. Thus, it is important to further investigate this phenomenon because previous
research demonstrated that boredom has negative impact to individuals and organizations
such as job performance, attendance, wellbeing and monetary loss.
In the United Kingdom in 2006, a survey by the Training and Development Agency for
Schools on 2,000 graduates aged 21 to 45, found more than half were regularly bored at work.
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The highest bored employees are from administrative and manufacturing jobs and the least
bored are healthcare workers and teachers ("Teaching 'the least boring job'," 2006). This
finding is in line with Fisher’s (1994) proposition that academician’s profession had been
associated with low occupational stress, less workload, and flexible working hours.
However, the scenario is changing drastically. Globalization and increase cost of living had
added more stress to academicians (Kalimo & Hakanen, 2000) due to its need to produce the
“best brain” which meets the market demand (Knight, 2002). In a recent report, academicians
claimed that they applied high job demands, such as teaching, researching, sourcing grant,
publishing papers, student consulting, and administrating work (Jaschik, 2013). At the same
time, students’ unmanageable behaviors increased the job demands applied to academicians
(Chang, 2009). Moreover, previous works of literature on academicians show that there is a
global association between profession and exhaustion from work (Nobile & McCormick, 2007;
Shuster & Finkelstein, 2006) in countries including Malaysia (Makhbul & Khairuddin, 2013;
Mustapha & Wee, 2013, Zakaria & Asmawi, 2015). These would most likely lead to more
turnover intention and absenteeism (De Croom et al., 2004).
In Malaysia, the actual academicians’ turnover in private higher education institutions
(PHEI) at a critical stage. According to the Ministry of Education Malaysia (2015), PHEIs
recorded a sudden shortfall of 8,516 academicians in 2013. From that point onward, they
have been constantly facing a shortage of academicians until today (Hashim & Mahmood,
2011). This phenomenon might be a challenge for the ministry to achieve its aim of increasing
the number of academicians’ enrolment, particularly in PHEIs by the year 2025, as stated in
the Malaysia Education Blueprint (MEB). Thus, the proposed study would like to identify: 1)
what causes boredom to occur among academicians in private higher education institutions,
and 2) how is it related to turnover intention?
Problem Statement
Firstly, boredom has been found to be influenced by organization and individual factors
(Fisher, 1994; Mercer-Lynnet al., 2014). No known research has combined both organizational
level (job demands and resources) and individual level such as personality in one study. No
known research has taken into consideration cultural dimension such as, time orientation, in
investigating boredom. Therefore, in this present study, personality traits namely,
neuroticism and extraversion are included to develop a framework for boredom. Time
orientation (monochromic versus polychronic) is also included in the study.
Secondly, Western scholars have critically emphasized exhaustion from work as one of the
factors of the turnover intention rather than boredom. High employees’ turnover intention
in Malaysia is closely associated with low job satisfaction and organizational commitment
(Yin-Fah et al., 2010; Lew, 2011; Nor & Johari, 2011; Hassan et al., 2015; Azalea & Mei-Hua,
2015). Not much investigation has investigated the possibility of boredom to induce turnover
intention. While study showed that academicians inflicted with boredom face a higher risk of
unproductivity and unpleasantness compared to those who are exhausted from work
(Reijseger et al., 2013).
Thirdly, the issue of boredom has been largely studied in western context namely Netherlands
(Reijseger et al., 2013; Van Wyk et al., 2016), Finland (Harju et al., 2014), United States
(Bruursema et al., 2006; Watt & Hargis, 2010), United Kingdom (Game, 2007), Italy
(Guglielmia et al., 2013), Canada (Tze et al., 2014), Australia (Whiteoak, 2014) under various
settings. There are limited investigations among the Eastern countries except in Pakistan
(Sohail et al., 2012; Khan et al., 2019) or Malaysian context (for exception Krasniqi et al., 2019
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in petroleum company; Hasanudin et al., 2016). Boredom, although is a universal experience,
it can be expected to be culture specific and culture dependent. Thus, this study will provide
some insights on boredom from Eastern context by using Malaysia as an exemplar.
Nonetheless, boredom from other perspective is possibly known as a relaxation or reflection
session. Darden (1999) mentioned that being bored allows employees to get their focus back
to their activity. In addition, Belton and Priyadharshini (2007) interpreted boredom as a
stimulus to encourage new ideas and actions. However, the negative impacts of boredom see
it as the factor of an organization’s deterioration.
Boredom in the Workplace
Boredom in the workplace is described as one of the widespread, contagious plaque in the
modern society, which is closely associated with blue collar and white-collar employees
(Heijden et al., 2012) at an increasing trend. It can be described as the feeling which builds up
within the employees towards their job and the working environment when they are exposed
to monotonous or repetitive activities, particularly in automation and technology-assisted
environment (Cummings et al., 2016). Loukidou et al. (2009) related boredom to employees’
experience in under-challenged (unpleasant) and under-stimulated (low activation) activities,
while Pekrun et al. (2010) associated it with the absence of value in getting jobs done. On the
other hand, Reijseger et al. (2013) defined boredom as the employee’s incapability to
concentrate on their jobs. Combining these descriptions altogether, boredom is defined as
the state of “disconnection” of an individual in terms of cognition, emotion, and physical
strength. This individual also lacks interest, passion, and attention to their job due to a non-
stimulating working environment where organizational outcomes can easily be affected.
How does boredom occur? In answering this question, it is important to recognize employee’s
capability in relation to their job characteristics and working environment in order to achieve
optimal performance. Some authors suggested that boredom occurs when the competence
of employees exceeds the demands and challenges of the organization. It could be simply said
that they are over-qualified for the organization. Besides, with their knowledge and the
assistance received from technology, their routine job will become easier. Although these
may lead to a significant increase in employees’ productivity, they will start to get bored with
the challenges in their line of work does not measure up to their capabilities. In other words,
highly educated employees who are enrolled in lower positions in their jobs are prone to
experience boredom (Leonhardt, 2009).
However, boredom is frequently neglected and is classified as an inconspicuous, “silent”
emotion, as compared to other affective conditions which do not manifest disruptiveness.
There is also a lower possibility of gaining mental disorder compared to the possibility of anger
and anxiety. Although sounds simplistic, boredom at workplace has been identified by
Department of Occupational Safety and Health, Ministry of Human Resources Malaysia as one
of the contributing factors to drugs and alcohol abuse among employees. In addition,
International Labor Office (ILO) Geneva on Stress at Work Prevention Checkpoints also
highlighted that alternative tasks should be provided to employees to prevent boredom. It is
important because previous research demonstrated that boredom has negative impact to
individuals and organizations such as job performance, attendance, wellbeing and monetary
loss.
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Role Conflict and Boredom
Role conflict is an important dimension of job demands. It occurs when an individual is
confronting with two or more job requirements or when an individual must behave against
own personal values (Brewer & Clippard, 2002), when individual juggle with many roles (Eby
et al., 2005) and there is a mismatching between job requirement and expectations. Clashes
happen when demands from superior, subordinates and co-workers are conflicting. In
consequence, the role overlapping nurture incompatible demands on individual which induce
negative emotion resulting failure to perform the job (Cooperet al., 2001).
Taking education as an example, higher education is experiencing paradigm shift from
traditional to global education, open market economy, long life education, and learner
centred education (Venkatasubramanian, 2002) where it promotes “One World” and “Global
Village”, knowledge without barriers. Therefore, employees i.e., academicians are expected
to be more responsive. One of the responds that could be capture are role conflict. They are
expected to be administrator, researcher, consultant, invigilator, coordinator and lecturer.
Academicians are experiencing role conflict where different responsibilities are structurally
required to perform (Gmelch & Torelli, 1994). It increases the possibility of role overloaded
(Tarrant & Sabo, 2010). On top of that, profit orientation by private universities in which put
forward number of recruits further enrich academician’s role. There are expected to support
the growing number of students parallel with greater role (Ceylan & Uluturk, 2006). Ability
to do many roles may hinder employees from experiencing boredom. However, role conflict
may also lead to boredom as employee does not know how to prioritize and where to start.
Workload and Boredom
Workload is the amount of work that need to be done within a specific duration of time. There
are two perceptions of workload against boredom namely higher workload and underload.
Firstly, boredom is negatively related with higher workload (Daniels, 2000). Higher workload
mean employees are entrusted by organization to do more within a specific time frame. In
such activating environment, they may find their job to be reversed “passive jobs” and hence,
avoiding boredom. Secondly, Van Wyk et al., (2016) argued boredom is positively related to
work underload. Work underload can be defined as having little things to do within a time
frame (Larson, 2004) and such work does not match to the employees’ competence, skills and
knowledge. As a result, employees may find the job unchallenging and thus, experience
boredom. Such findings are consistent with control value theory where it parks boredom as
an achievement emotion arises from unpleasant and deactivating activity in due to the loss
of control and value of the work (Pekrun, 2006). Therefore, as employees received greater
workload, they are stimulated instead of getting bored.
Job Autonomy and Boredom
Job autonomy is “the degree to which the job provides substantial freedom, independence
and discretion to the individual in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to
be used in carrying it out” (Hackman & Lawler, 1971) and providing employees with
opportunities to learn, grow and lead (Manz & Sims, 2001). In such circumstances, employees
may experience challenging jobs, thus impede boredom. However, (Bashir, 2011) disclosed
that some may dislike job autonomy as it requires more commitment, trust and responsibility
to be deployed into the job with little support (Langfred, 2004). In such circumstances,
employees may experience unchallenging jobs, thus boredom is experienced.
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Social Support and Boredom
Social support is regarded as the availability of helping relationship between colleagues. Such
relationship exists in term of encouragement towards job participation, guidance and
attention (Rodriguez & Cohen, 1998). In this present study, social support refers to the
availability of co-workers or superiors who are friendly and communicative in solving
problems encountered by employees. As noted by Nor & Johari, the meaningful job feedback
can be deemed as one of the social support element that can provided the quality of work life
towards the worker. Employees are loaded researching, lecturing, marking, and recruiting as
well as being administrator, invigilator, and mentor. Hence, it is believed that employees may
experience lacking support in completing the tasks, which may lead to boredom.
Neuroticism and Boredom
Neuroticism is a negative personality trait with high stress sensitivity (Suls, 2001). Employees
with high neuroticism are those who are associated with negative affect, inability to cope with
stress, pressure and emotionally unstable. Spector et al., (2006) reported that individual with
high neuroticism perceived challenging work as threatening and tends to view the world
negatively. Such characteristic has predetermined that neuroticism are correlated with
negative performance outcomes such as in psychological distress, job satisfaction (Judge,
Heller, & Mount, 2002) and health impairment (Bakker et al., 2010). In this present study,
neuroticism is referred to the tendency of an academician experiencing distress with negative
affect personality. Due to low tolerance towards challenging job with negative affect,
academician with neuroticism is most likely to encounter boredom at workplace.
Extroversion and Boredom
Employees with high extroversion are those who are associated with positive affect,
sociability, optimism and personal energy, that demonstrate high enthusiasm and most of the
time, being active resulting greater tendency to experience positive emotions. In addition,
extroverts perceived challenging work positively and rewarding in due to more favourable
working conditions (Bakker et al., 2010) coupled with energized and fun-loving characteristic
(McCrae & Costa, 2003). Empirically, extroversion is linked to the positive performance
outcomes such as job satisfaction (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002), organizational commitment
(Bakker et al., 2010) and work engagement (Langelaan et al., 2006). Thus, extrovert is less
likely to experience burnout and boredom (Bakker et al., 2005).
Boredom and Turnover Intention
Boredom is regarded as a negative state of cognition, emotion and physical strength
that strike employees to be deactivated and unpleasant with of their unchallenging job.
Boredom as a negative wellbeing (Whiteoak, 2014) are driving employees to perform
negatively such as ill health (Harju, Hakanen, & Schaufeli, 2014), job dissatisfaction (Spector
& Fox, 2006), poor job performance (Watt & Hargis, 2010), high absenteeism (Wan et al,,
2014), and poor organizational commitment (Van Wyk et al., 2016). Across time, turnover
intention may therefore occur as employees are constantly dissatisfied with the job and
organization. The final action of turnover may happen if the situation is becoming worsen and
none control, and intervention exertion took place by the managers. As boredom is a
negative emotion, it is most likely to expect that employee will experience turnover intention.
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Workload, Boredom and Turnover Intention
The direct relationship of workload and job burnout had been long established in the
literature among scholars. In this present study, boredom at workplace will be introduced as
a mediator between workload and job burnout. Based on control value theory, it is argued
that as employee’s loss their ability to control and value their current activity, they will
experience changes in term of emotion instead of affecting wellbeing directly. On the other
hand, when employees regard heavy workload as challenge, they may have lesser tendency
to experience boredom and be less likely to encounter job burnout. On another hand, when
employees perceived underload as unchallenging, they are prone to experience boredom and
most likely to encounter job burnout.
Job Autonomy, Boredom and Turnover Intention
Job autonomy has frequently associated as determinant for intrinsic motivation that
significantly related to work engagement (Demerouti et al., 2001). As employees are
empowered, it engenders greater responsibility and trust in executing work which allow
employees to learn, grow and lead (Manz & Sims, 2001) through challenging task. However,
some employees prefer to be followers (Bashir, 2011) instead of being authorized as it
requires more commitment, trust and responsibility to be deployed into the job with little
support (Langfred, 2004). In this present study, boredom at workplace will be introduced as
a mediator that mediates the positive direct relationship between job autonomy and turnover
intention. Guglielmi et al., (2013), provide two perspectives of job autonomy among
employees.
On the positive side, job autonomy increases learning opportunities and promote employees’
enthusiasm and motivation to invest effort in getting their work done. Due to that, employees
are hindering boredom at workplace and receive job satisfaction which may turn down
turnover intention. On the negative side, employees may view job autonomy as “extra work”
which increase their responsibilities and commitment which eventually reduce their learning
opportunities making the job unchallenging and bored. In addition to that, Nor and Johari
(2011) emphasized that the non-meaningful job autonomy chances does contributed to the
tendency to leave. Different setting of job autonomy will give different impression and
adaptation to the individual. Therefore, employees receive greater job dissatisfaction. In such
situation it may initiate turnover intention.
Social Support, Boredom and Turnover Intention
Social support is an important element of job resources and found to be crucial determinant
for employees’ turnover intention. Whenever employees are having strong social support,
they are eager to work and may find their work interesting instead of getting bored and hence
lowered turnover intention (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004; Alzyoud et al., 2015). In this present
study, boredom at workplace will act as a mediator between social support and turnover
intention. As the employees are overloaded, it is possible that they may have poor social
support. Under such circumstance, employees who need support are most likely to be
demotivated and may get bored easily as they are working alone without support. Across
time, it may initiate turnover intention. On other hand, greater social support generates
challenging tasks in which motivate employees to progress and invest effort by seeking
assistance from co-workers or superiors. Across time, they are motivated and engaged to the
work and lower turnover intention.
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Neuroticism, Boredom and Turnover Intention
Past studies had documented employees with neuroticism are closely related to negative
outcomes such as psychological distress, job dissatisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) and health
impairment (Bakker et al., 2010). Such findings deduced that neuroticism personality is more
susceptible to boredom at workplace. According to Pekrun (2006), emotion is a response
shown by employees after appraising an event and situation in term of control and value.
Employee with neuroticism personality prefers to interpret events negatively and have lower
tolerance towards challenging event (Spector et al., 2006). Hence, employees with such
personality are most likely experiencing boredom at workplace as compare to others. High
boredom may influence high turnover intention.
Extroversion, Boredom and Turnover Intention
Past studies had documented employees with extroversion are closely related to positive
outcome such as job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) and organizational commitment (Bakker
et al., 2010). In fact, Langelaan et al., (2006) reported extroversion is positively related to work
engagement, specifically in the aspect of vigour (Brief & Weiss, 2002). Such findings deduced
that extroversion personality is less susceptible to boredom at workplace. According to
Pekrun (2006), emotion is a response shown by employees after appraising an event and
situation in term of control and value. Employee with extroversion personality is positive,
energized, active and fun-loving (McCrae & Costa, 2003). It nurtures optimal positive
wellbeing (Keyes et al., 2002) in dealing with challenging task. Due to such personality,
boredom is most unlikely to occur. This is supported by O’Hanlon (1981) where extroverts
have a lower level of boredom at workplace as compared to introvert. Less boredom may lead
to lower turnover intention.
Time Orientation
Time orientation can be divided into two, which are Monochronic and Polychronic. M-time
views time as linear, an entity to be saved, spent or lost (Manrai & Manrai, 1995). So
individuals with monochronic time orientation (monochrons) prefer to complete one task at
a time and adhere to a rigid appointment schedule. While promptness is important, the social
context of interactions is given low importance (Manrai & Manrai, 1995). M-time is more
common in Western developed countries such as the United States and Western Europe.
In contrast, P-time views time as fluid and flexible, and polychrons prefer to work on multiple
tasks before completing one (Bluedorn et al., 1992). Punctuality is negotiable and constant
interruptions are tolerated (Storz, 1999). A high level of interaction among employees could
be observed in polychronic) because they are more relationship oriented. P-time is more
common in developing countries such as Asia (except Japan), Latin America and the Middle
East (Manrai & Manrai, 1995).
As Malaysia is still categorized as a developing country with collectivist values, it is considered
as having a predominantly polychronic time orientation. According to Storz (1999), Malaysian
businesspeople view time as subjective. The Malaysian ‘rubber time’ concept suggests that
time is changeable and stretchable, therefore punctuality, deadlines, forecasting and
planning are moveable. The attitude of ‘rubber time’ may create less boredom because the
social and relational aspect of the business is more important than the business per se.
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Consequences of Boredom
Evidently, boredom in the workplace has more negative impacts on health (Harju et al., 2014),
job performance (Watt & Hargis, 2010), job satisfaction (Spector & Fox, 2006), employees’
emotion (Culp, 2006), attendance (Wan et al., 2014), and well-being (Loukidou et al., 2009),
across various countries. Moreover, it leads to monetary loss at the organization level. To
prove this point, Malachowski (2005) found that one-third of 10,000 United States employees
spend two hours of their working hours for personal matters, and this causes a $750 billion
total loss per annum. In addition, Eddy et al., (2010) conducted a study on various
occupations, and they reported that employees inflicted with boredom spend almost five
hours for personal activities, such as using the Internet, emailing, making phone calls, or
conversing with co-workers during the workweek.
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework
Summary
The important yet unexplored issue of boredom in the workplace provides ample
opportunities for research on this issue to be carried out. Boredom is possibly one of the
important key elements in determining employees’ turnover intention, As shown in Figure 1,
the boredom framework is developed by investigating its causes, consequences and
mediating as well as moderating effect. Boredom, although is a universal experience, it can
be expected to be culture specific and culture dependent. Thus, this study proposes to
examine cultural factor, i.e., time orientation (monochronic and polychronic) as moderator
between antecedents and boredom, and boredom to consequences. Hence, identifying the
root problems of boredom in the workplace, human resource practitioners will be assisted in
reducing the occurrence of boredom in the workplace in more practical ways, such as job
redesigning and training. Ultimately, the turnover intention will be reduced.
Acknowledgement
The study was funded by Special Grant Scheme Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
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