Taxing situations that threaten the administrator's sense of self-efficacy meaningfully account for burnout in human-service professionals. This paper presents findings of a study that hypothesized that environmental or role stressors could be classified as task, organization, and relations stressors, each pertaining to a different domain of the professional's sense of self-efficacy. The second hypothesis was that each of these role stressors accounted for a different proportion in the variation of the professional's perceived burnout. A total of 821 elementary and secondary school principals in Israel completed a questionnaire designed to measure stressors, coping strategies, and burnout. Factor analysis was used to test the first hypothesis, and discriminant and multiple-regression analyses were used to test the second hypothesis. Results indicated that common environmental stressors could be categorized as "organization stressors" (pressures stemming from human-resource-management issues and resource dependence); "task stressors" (overload, role ambiguity and conflict, and administrative and technical assistance in role performance); and "relations stressors" (external relations with parents and supervisors). The findings also indicate that organization stressors were the best predicting variables distinguishing between high- and low-burnout principals. Human-resource management best predicted high levels of depersonalization and exhaustion, whereas resource dependency predicted sense of accomplishment. The paper argues that perceived threat against a principal's authority acts as a strain contributing to burnout. Therefore, new boundaries and expectations should be defined to bring about more realistic relations between school principals and incumbents. Training should focus on human-resource management and how to better utilize internal and external resources. Two figures and five tables are included. (Contains 16 references.) (LMI)