When does boundary-spanner burnout connect participation and customer relationship performance? The role of the firm's network centrality and network density

Abstract

Managing business-to-business (B2B) relationships can be taxing for many boundary-spanners and lead to burnout. However, despite the widespread prevalence of burnout in the contemporary workplace, B2B marketing research has overlooked the question of what leads to boundary-spanner burnout, along with its relational consequences. This study draws from the job demands-resources model and network theory, connects these two lenses, and explains how boundary-spanner burnout mediates the link between customer participation (CP), supplier participation (SP), and customer relationship performance (CRP), and how focal firms' network centrality and network density moderate the nexus of those linkages. Using dyadic data in which we match pairs of boundary-spanners and managers, we reveal both CP and SP positively relate to boundary-spanner burnout. Nevertheless, we find that firms' network centrality positively moderates the CP–burnout and SP–burnout relationships and firms' network density, while positively moderating the CP–burnout relationship, negatively moderates the SP–burnout relationship. Our key contribution is revealing the pivotal and multifaceted role of network centrality and density in conditioning the mediating role of boundary-spanner burnout in connecting CP, SP, and CRP.