“Perceived Organizational Politics at Work: The Pathway towards Job Burnout with Mediation of Resentment and Moderation of Social Intelligence”

Perceived organizational politics is explicitly conceptualized as a critical influence on employees' psychological and emotional experiences at work. This study examines the relationship between perceived organizational politics and job burnout, with resentment as a mediating mechanism and social intelligence as a boundary condition, grounded in Affective Events Theory and the Conservation of Resources Theory. Resentment is anticipated as a pivotal emotional mechanism through which perceived organizational politics leads to job burnout. Moreover, social intelligence is examined as a buffer role against the hostile emotional outcomes of perceived organizational politics. A quantitative, time-lagged survey design was used to collect data from 340 professionals working in public and private IT organizations of Pakistan. Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed mediation and moderation effects. The results indicate that perceived organizational politics is positively associated with job burnout. Resentment partially mediates this association, demonstrating that unjust political power practices cultivate feelings of resentment, which, in turn, enrich job burnout. Furthermore, social intelligence drastically moderates the association between perceived organizational politics and resentment. Employees with higher social intelligence report lower levels of resentment when encountering hostile and unjust power dynamics, thus lowering their susceptibility to job burnout. This study extends the burnout literature by empirically indicating the emotional pathway linking perceived organizational politics to job burnout. In practice, the findings emphasize the importance of curtailing malevolent organizational power structures and fostering employees' social intelligence to promote well-being and reduce job burnout.