JD-C Model to Explain Burnout in Frontline Workers: The Useful Contribution of Emotional Demands Filipa Castanheira and Maria Jos ´ e Chambel Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal 1649-013 Abstract Using the Job Demands-Control (JD-C) model as the theoretical framework, this study investigated the relationships among burnout, job demands, and autonomy. With a sample of 802 employees from a Portuguese bank, we demonstrated the importance of taking into account emotional job demands when studying the burnout of service providers. Thereby, the unique explanatory power of each emotional demand on burnout was tested with regression analysis, after controlling for the original demands and autonomy variables from the JD-C model along with demographic variables. The results confirmed the relevance of the study model in explaining burnout and indicated that emotional dissonance was associated with employee burnout, beyond quantitative demands and autonomy. As expected, hierarchical regression analysis provided evidence for the main effects of quantitative demands, emotional dissonance, and autonomy on burnout. These findings have several implications for designing jobs involving interactions with clients. C  2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Keywords: Work design; Karasek model; Burnout; Emotional demands; Service industry 1. INTRODUCTION Work design theories have long helped scholars and practitioners understand the impact of jobs on in- dividual, group, and organizational outcomes. The Job Demands-Control (JD-C) model (Karasek, 1979; Karasek & Theorell, 1990) has dominated research on how the work environment affects employees’ psycho- logical well-being. This model predicts that psycho- logical job strain results from the joint effects of quan- titative demands in a work situation and the range of control available to the worker in meeting the de- mands (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). With the growth of the “service economy,” however, work has become in- Correspondence to: Filipa Castanheira, Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-013 LISBOA, Portugal. Phone: 00 351 21 794 36 55; e-mail: fcastanheira@fp.ul.pt Received: 3 January 2011; revised 9 March 2011; accepted 21 March 2011 View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hfm DOI: 10.1002/hfm.20326 creasingly “client-driven,” and new job demands have appeared. Researchers now claim that current theo- retical models and empirical studies of job design no longer reflect—and have yet to integrate—the impact of the dramatic changes in work contexts that have occurred over the past few decades (Grant & Parker, 2009). In response to this change in the nature of de- mands related to work, some authors have put forward new emerging job demands in the context of the JD-C model (Heuven & Bakker; 2003; Mikkelsen, Ogaard, & Landsbergis, 2005). Burnout is a psychological syndrome with exhaus- tion and cynicism as core dimensions (Maslach & Jackson, 1986). Researchers have demonstrated that burnout is a consequence of exposure to low auton- omy and chronic job demands, including emotional demands for service workers (Dormann & Zapf, 2004; Heuven & Bakker, 2003; Hochschild, 1983; Mikkelsen et al., 2005). This study was designed to test the joint effects of demands and autonomy according to the JD-C model with a sample of 802 front-line employees from a Portuguese bank. The purpose of this study is to Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries 00 (0) 1–12 (2011) c  2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1