EECERA Conference 2025 – Guest Blog # 15: Organizational Culture Influences Burnout

One of a series of short blog posts by presenters who will be sharing their work at the upcoming annual conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. Any views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of their affiliated institution or EECERA.

How Organizational Culture Influences Burnout Among Preschool Educators: Data from Moscow

By Anastasia Belolutskaya-Moscow City University, Russia and Natalia Zhabina, Moscow City University, Russia

Photo by Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash

Emotional burnout remains one of the key challenges for preschool educators worldwide. It reduces job satisfaction, worsens the quality of educational activities, and negatively impacts children’s well-being. Despite numerous studies focusing on individual stress-coping strategies, significantly less attention is paid to systemic organizational factors that contribute to burnout in early childhood education institutions.

In our recent study conducted in Moscow, we examined the relationship between types of organizational culture in kindergartens and the level of emotional burnout among educators. The study considered the following types of organizational culture:

• Role Culture — based on strict hierarchy, clear division of responsibilities, and control. Management is centralized with an emphasis on stability and order.
• Family Culture — characterized by warm, supportive relationships, where care for each employee and a sense of belonging to the team are important.
• Achievement Culture — focuses on goal attainment, efficiency, and competition. Requires high productivity and accountability for results.
• Innovative Culture — based on partnership, professional freedom, innovation, and creativity. Supports employee initiative and autonomy.

Key Findings

The analysis showed significant differences in burnout levels depending on the type of organizational culture:

• Educators working within a role culture demonstrated substantially higher levels of emotional burnout compared to other culture types;
• Most educators work in role cultures but clearly prefer family culture;
• Family culture is perceived by educators as more attractive due to its supportive atmosphere and mutual assistance, yet it does not promote professional development;
• Innovative culture, based on partnership between management and staff, subjectivity, and project work, has the greatest potential to prevent emotional burnout but is still insufficiently widespread and requires adaptation from both administration and educators.

Why This Matters

Role culture is attractive to leaders because it provides stability, clear role distribution, and strict control, leading to predictable outcomes. However, these same features negatively affect educators’ well-being. Educators in such organizations often face:

• Restrictions on professional autonomy and agency;
• Lack of opportunities for creativity and project work;
• Increased emotional exhaustion, which leads to depersonalization and reduced empathy towards children.

Our data align with international studies showing that a lack of professional autonomy is a key predictor of burnout (Burger, Bellhäuser, Imhof, 2021).

It was also found that achievement culture, focused on high performance, can increase burnout by depleting educators’ resources and reducing job satisfaction.

The Paradox of Organizational Culture Preferences

Although educators find family culture most appealing, it does not always promote professional growth and initiative. Conversely, innovative culture, which features partnership between management and employees, autonomy, and project work, helps prevent burnout. However, this format is often unacceptable to both administration (fear of losing control) and educators (need to take on greater responsibility).

Practical Conclusions

• Role culture may provide short-term stability but undermines educators’ well-being, increasing staff turnover risk and negatively affecting children’s experience.
• Educators’ well-being is directly linked to the safety and quality of child care. Burnout leads to emotional detachment, decreased attentiveness, and increased conflict.
• The COVID-19 context has worsened the situation by adding stress and burden to educators, highlighting the need for systemic support.

Future Research Prospects

Longitudinal studies are recommended to understand how changes in organizational culture affect stress and burnout levels, and which management models help balance structure and autonomy.

What Will Be Presented at EECERA 2025?

• The presentation will cover:
• Empirical data on the relationship between organizational culture and burnout among educators;
• Reasons for the popularity of role culture and its negative consequences;
• The role of partnership and professional autonomy in reducing emotional burnout;
• Practical recommendations for educational leaders on creating a supportive work environment.

Invitation to Collaborate

I invite colleagues researching educator well-being, organizational culture transformation, and leadership in early childhood education to share experiences and collaborate on joint research. Creating a supportive professional environment benefits both adults and children.

Connect with the authors:
Anastasia Belolutskaya– beloluckayaak@mgpu.ru
Natalia Zhabina– zhabinang@mgpu.ru

Anastasia Belolutskaya will present work referred to in this blog in Symposium Set F (Wednesday, the 27th of August). (Schedule liable to change; please refer to final programme for details).