Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 24, Issue 6, 17 September 2008, Pages 3002-3013
Computers in Human Behavior

Technostress under different organizational environments: An empirical investigation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.05.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Today’s pervasive information and communications technologies (ICTs) enable us to get connected almost anywhere at anytime. ICTs such as the Internet, the advanced wireless technologies and mobile communications networks are becoming increasingly indispensable in many aspects of business and everyday life. But to keep up with the fast advancing pace of the new ICTs, employees have to constantly renew their technical skills as well as enduring pressure from a more complex system and higher expectations for productivity. This often leads to ICT related technostress experienced by employees in many organizations. Studies have found technostress to have significant negative impact on employee productivity. Based on large-scale survey responses Chinese employees, this paper investigates the effects of different organizational environment settings on employee technostress levels. The results show that employees from more centralized companies often perceive more technostress. In addition, in organizations that are both highly centralized and highly innovative, the overall technostress level is the highest. On the other hand, in organizations with low centralization and low innovation, technostress is the lowest. This research will provide a foundation for organizations to understand and alleviate technostress, thus improving employee performance.

Introduction

The diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICTs) such as the Internet, the advanced wireless technologies and mobile communications networks have fundamentally changed our way of routine work and daily life (Hoffman, Novak, & Venkatesh, 2004). The pervasive ICTs make it possible for people to get connected anywhere at anytime, thus data and information can be delivered in real time to support business and personal decisions. On one hand, the dependence on advanced ICTs brings noted convenience and productivity gains. On the other hand, however, people are suffering from being surrounded by overwhelming and rapidly changing technologies. This often leads to ICT related technostress experienced by employees in many organizations. Studies have found technostress to have significant negative impact on employee productivity (Tarafdar, Tu, Ragu-Nathan, & Ragu-Nathan, 2007).

The following scene is familiar to many office workers: urgently ringing phones and fax machines greet employees upon entering the office, and hundreds of emails are waiting attention and feedback. If any problems occur with the network, such as a busy server or connection breakdown, then all work come to a halt as repairs are made and employees anxiously waiting. Meanwhile, the convenience of technology also raised management expectations for productivity. Employees are often expected to be reachable through email or cell phone while at home or even on vacation. Thomee, Eklof, Gustafsson, Nilsson, and Hagber (2007) found that ICT use may have an impact on psychological health. A high combined use of computers and mobile phones was associated with an increased risk of experiencing prolonged stress and symptoms of depression. A report from Health Canada (Duxbury & Higgins, 2001) indicated that new ICTs are linked to increased workload, which is often beyond people’s ability to deal with within normal business hours. Almost no respondents in the survey reported that technology reduced their job stress. The same case appeared for managers. Over three quarters of managers in the survey felt that technology, instead of alleviating job stress, actually increased their workloads.

The technostress problem is more evident in information technology (IT) professionals, who simultaneously create new technology and are affected by it. Today, the IT industry is the fastest growing industry in China and IT companies are facing tremendous competitive pressure. IT professionals must continually learn and apply new technology into their projects as quickly as possible. Due to shortage of time, they are forced to update their knowledge and skills in their spare time including holidays. They are subjected to workload increases due to the complexity of new technology systems and the relatively short time frame to complete IT projects. According to a health survey (Anne, 2004), the main causes of job stress for white-collar workers in China are workload and occupational crises.

To keep up with the fast advancing pace of the new ICTs, employees have to constantly renew their technical skills as well as enduring pressure from a more complex system and higher expectations for productivity. In the meantime, the introduction of new technologies is often accompanied by organizational downsizing, which means there are fewer people to do the same amount of work. At present, many Chinese firms are carrying out information technology reconstruction within the workforce. As more and more computers are placed on employee desktops, the technostress level may also increase and the organizational productivity and work efficiency may suffer. Companies must take practical measures to cope with technostress (Tu, Wang, & Shu, 2005).

Section snippets

The definition of technostress

The term “technostress” first appeared in Craig Brod (1984), where technostress was defined as “a modern disease of adaptation caused by an inability to cope with the new computer technologies in a healthy manner”. Weil and Rosen (1997) expanded the definition of technostress to include “any negative impact on attitudes, thoughts, behaviors or psychology caused directly or indirectly by technology.” Technostress is also labeled by researchers with various terms like: technophobia, cyberphobia,

Organizational environment and hypotheses development

An organizational environment is defined by all the potential factors or powers to influence organizational operation and performance, including external environment and internal environment (Robbins, 1996). The external environment includes all the factors outside of a given organization such as governmental policies and social background. As the name states, the internal environment includes the internal factors and powers that affect managerial decision-making and how organizational

Sample

The survey instrument of this research is based on the Technostress Questionnaire developed by Ragu-Nathan, Ragu-Nathan, and Tu (2002). This questionnaire has been translated from English into Chinese. In order to ensure that the translated version of the questionnaire is suitable for the Chinese employees and still maintain the same validity and reliability of the original English version, a pilot study was conducted to reassess the reliability and validity of the measures. Then, preliminary

Analytical results

Table 3 reports the means, standard deviations and correlations of all variables in this study. Overall technostress has a significant positive correlation with the extent of centralization (r = 0.286, p < 0.01) and innovation environment (r = 0.153, p < 0.01). The result is similar to the literature mentioned above.

Stepwise multiple regressions are used to test the hypotheses. Table 4 presents the results of the analysis taking into consideration the effects of the control variables. We find that the

Discussions

This paper investigated the impact of different organizational internal environments (centralization extent and innovation environment) on the level of employee technostress. The results show that the centralization extent of an organization has significant positive relationship with technostress and the innovation environment of an organization also has significant positive relationship with technostress.

Hypothesis 1 studies the impact of organizational centralization on technostress.

Implications

In the knowledge-based economy, technological developments are continually changing the way companies operate their business. While firms enjoy the benefits from technological advancements, they are also challenged by the feeling of inability to deal with rapid technological changes. ICTs are increasingly affecting all aspects of human society, especially our workplace and daily life. Studies show that in developed countries, people are more and more dependent on the Internet (Hoffman et al.,

Limitations

One limitation of our study is the scope of sampling, which led to excessive convergence of samples in certain geographic regions and demographic characteristics. The second limitation is that we have not considered the impact of other factors in organizational internal environments. For example, the organizational culture was divided into seven dimensions including outcome orientation, team orientation, etc. These factors should be included in classifying organizational internal environment in

Conclusion

This study investigates the impacts of different organizational environment variables on the level of employee technostress. The findings suggest that appropriate organizational internal environment configuration is useful in alleviating employee technostress. Research about technostress in Chinese companies is a new and growing field and the finding can be extended to other cultural settings. Future research may explore the differences in technostress perceived by employees in different

Acknowledgement

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant # 70372049.

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