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Technostress under different organizational environments: An empirical investigation
Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 3002–3013
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Technostress under different organizational environments: An empirical investigation Kanliang Wang a, Qin Shu a, Qiang Tu b,* a b
School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China E. Philip Saunders College of Business, Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY 14623, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Available online 24 June 2008 Keywords: Technostress Organizational internal environment Factor analysis
a b s t r a c t 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. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 585 475 2314; fax: +1 585 475 5975. E-mail address: [email protected] (Q. Tu). 0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.05.007
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1. 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).
2. Theoretical background of the technostress concept 2.1. 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, computerphobia, computer anxiety, computer stress, negative computer attitudes, and other similar
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terms. In summary, we define technostress as a reflection of one’s discomposure, fear, tenseness and anxiety when one is learning and using computer technology directly or indirectly, that ultimately ends in psychological and emotional repulsion and prevents one from further learning or using computer technology. 2.2. Components of technostress The existing literature identifies several aspects of technostress, including work overload, individual life invasion, high complexity of technology, and occupational crisis (Brod, 1984; Weil & Rosen, 1997). Tarafdar et al. (2007) further developed and validated a technostress measurement scale based on US data. The scale defined five components of technostress that describe typical situations where the use of computer technology can potentially create technostress. The five components are: (1) Techno-overload: the ICTs pushes employees to work faster; (2) Techno-invasion: the pervasive ICTs invades personal life; (3) Techno-complexity: the complexity of new ICTs makes employees feel incompetent; (4) Techno-insecurity: the job security of employees threatened by fast changing ICTs; and (5) Techno-uncertainty: the constant changes, upgrades and bug fixes in ICT hardware and software impose stress on the end-users. 2.3. Causes of technostress Several other studies also summarized the various causes of technostress. Bloom (1985) states that the scarcity of computer ability and experience are the major causes of computer-related technostress. For example, computer training is often impeded by such fears as breaking the machine, looking foolish or losing control. Doronina (1995) identified several types of computer anxiety: the fear of breaking the computer in some way, a feeling of ignorance or ineptitude, anxiety of new technology and mathematics, and various health threats. Furthermore, there is either a general mistrust of, or too much trust in, computers. Another type of computer anxiety can be characterized as ‘‘time panic”, the feeling of not having enough time, the feeling that it is impossible to understand and remember everything and finish the task on time. The state of time panic is manifested especially when there is a controlled assignment that requires a certain span of time. 2.4. Coping strategies for technostress Coping strategies for technostress have been classified into two major categories: emotion-focused strategies and problem-focused strategies. According to Monat and Lazarus (1991), problem-focused coping refers to the improvement efforts toward the troubled worker/environment relationship. For example, the employees experiencing technostress can seek information about what to do, hold back from impulsive and premature actions, and confront the person or persons responsible for one’s difficulty. Emotion-focused coping refers to thoughts or actions with the goal of relieving the emotional impact of stress. Such strategies of coping do not actually alter the threatening or damaging conditions, but they can make the person feel better. Examples are avoiding thinking about the trouble, denying that anything is wrong, distancing or detaching oneself as in joking about what makes one feel distressed, or taking tranquilizers as an attempt to relax. Problem-focused coping strategies have sometimes been referred to as direct approaches, while emotion-focused coping strategies are indirect approaches. However, these two types of coping strategies also have negative impacts. For instance, although technology-based training is an effective alleviating tactic, when a company frequently trains its employees, the routine work time and leisure time of employees may be reduced, which in turn causes higher stress. Therefore, one must be careful in choosing these coping strategies. A careful literature review shows that with respect to the causes, components and coping strategies of technostress, previous studies have mostly focused on individual level factors but seldom on organizational level factors. On one hand, the cultures and internal environment of an organization have definite influence on job stress perceived by employees (Hannakaisa, Jose, & Mika, 2000; Sosik &
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Godshalk, 2000). On the other hand, organizations must also take measures to avoid or alleviate computer technostress in order to enhance or maintain organizational efficiency and performance (Murphy, 1987). Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the impact of different organizational internal environments on ICT related technostress. It is also necessary to search for appropriate measures in an organization to avoid and alleviate technostress. These two research questions are discussed in more detail in the following sections.
3. 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 objectives are achieved. This study examines how the organizational internal environment influences employee technostress levels. Several studies have examined the influence of organizational internal environment on the job stress of employees. Hendrix, Summers, Leap, and Steel (1995) divided the causes of stress into three categories: organizational internal factors, organizational external factors, and individual characteristics. Organizational internal factors are regarded as the most direct influencing factors of job stress. These include temporal stress, lowered initiative, and decreased participation and control in management/supervision, organizational atmosphere, and organizational conflict. Weiss (1983) pointed out that there were many types of stressors in various organizations that include organizational construction and atmosphere (lack of participation and limitations in jobs) and the relationship of colleagues (collision of ideas that lead to suspicions). Ibancevich and Matteson (1979) developed a ManagerialOriented Stress Model noting that the stresses from the organizational level are as follows: the organizational atmosphere, the management style, the relationship of colleagues, organizational communication, etc. A common theme among these studies is that the internal power structure of the organization influences job stress. Several recent studies have specifically investigated how an organization’s internal power structure influences the stress level of employees. Xu (2004) pointed out that highly centralized power structure in an organization is an important source of stress. Studies show that when employees participate in decision-making, they report a relatively low level of job stress (Mkkelsen, Sasaksvik, & Landsbergis, 2000). Consequently, we think that the centralization of power in an organization will increase employee technostress. Moreover, employees’ lack of participation in the decision-making processes of new technology introduction may also increase computer-related technostress. Therefore, we have the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: The extent of power centralization in an organization has a positive relationship with the level of employee technostress. The existing literatures reported that organizational culture would influence an organization’s operation as a whole and on individual levels (Barney, 1986; Denison & Mishra, 1995; Sheridan, 1992; Wilkins & Ouchi, 1983). Schwartz and Davis (1981) also indicated that an organization’s culture could act as leverage for managers which in turn, affects the decision making process of the organization. However, the main factor that determines people’s social behavior is the subjective consciousness and not a person’s objective surroundings. For example, rewards (money or praise) can be regarded as one method to control the employees, but it can also be regarded as affirmation of the employees’ abilities. Therefore, rewards will have different implications. It is possible that the employees with negative perspective can suffer anxiety or depression, and thus a decline in performance, while the employees with positive perspective will be motivated to improve performance (Ma & Bao, 1999). Will different organizational cultures have different impact on the level of technostress?
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Fig. 1. Organizational internal environment configurations.
According to the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP) developed by O’reilly et al. (1991), the organizational culture is divided into seven dimensions including innovation, stability, respect for people, outcome orientation, attention to detail, team orientation and aggressiveness. This paper focuses on how innovation culture affects the level of employee technostress. Bryan, Ajay, and Simon (2002) surveyed 130 US manufacturing companies and found that the faster the new product ideas were conceived and ratified, the higher the organizational stress level. Generally, an innovation oriented organizational culture often promotes frequent technological changes and internal environment changes, which are important antecedents to individual stress. Therefore, we hypothesize that: Hypothesis 2: The organizational culture of innovation increases the level of employee technostress. Further, we consider the extent of the centralization and innovation environment of an organization as two dimensions to categorize an organization’s internal environment. The extent of centralization is divided into high centralization and low centralization. The innovation environment is divided into high innovation and low innovation. Therefore, four different organizational internal environment configurations can be formed: (I) low centralization/low innovation, (II) low centralization/high innovation, (III) high centralization/low innovation, and (IV) high centralization/high innovation (see Fig. 1). An additional research question is whether employees perceive different levels of technostress under different configurations of organizational internal environment.
4. Research method 4.1. Sample The survey instrument of this research is based on the Technostress Questionnaire developed by Ragu-Nathan and Ragu-Nathan (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 data analysis was performed. When compared with US data, the result does not show significant differences. The components of technostress are the same, but a few items do not converge properly to the intended factor. Therefore, we reworded several items and the final Chinese version was confirmed after the revisions. The survey was distributed to a random sample of 1462 employees in 86 Chinese organizations based in Xi’an, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Taiyuan, Beijing, Shijiazhuang and Shanghai, covering manufacturing, financial, information technology, service industries and government agencies. 28.3% of the organizations have over 500 employees and 62.6% of them have between 500 and 50 employees. Only 9.1% of the organizations have less than 50 employees.
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A total of 1029 questionnaires were completed representing a 70.38% response rate. We carefully checked these questionnaires and removed the ones that are incomplete. A total of 951 usable questionnaires were used in the following analysis. Among the 951 respondents, close to 15% are at supervisor or top management level, and the rest are professional staff; about 34.3% are female; approximately 37% are below 26 years of age, 48% are from 26 to 35, and the rest are older than 36. 4.2. Measures for independent and dependent variables All items in the questionnaire are measured on a 5-point Liker type scale, with 1 indicating ‘‘strongly disagree” and 5 indicating ‘‘strongly agree”. Respondents were asked to circle the appropriate number to indicate the extent to which he/she agreed or disagreed with each statement. We also included perceptive questions about levels of individual productivity and various demographic variables at the end of the questionnaire. Twenty four items were used to measure technostress. Factor analysis extracted five clear factors with satisfactory reliability scores; namely, techno-overload, techno-invasion, techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty (see Table 1). These results confirmed the five technostress creators discussed in the Tarafdar et al. (2007) study.
Table 1 Factor analysis of technostress creators Factors
Items
Describe
Loading
a
Techno-overload
X101 X102 X103 X104 X105 X106
I am forced by this technology to work much faster I am forced by this technology to do more work than I can handle I am forced by this technology to work with very tight time schedules I am forced to change my work habits to adapt to new technologies I have a higher workload because of increased technology complexity I have to spend a lot of time everyday reading an overwhelming amount of e-mail messages I have to work harder because of delays from hardware, software and network problems I spend less time with my family due to this technology I have to be in touch with my work even during my vacation due to the technology I have to sacrifice my vacation and weekend time to keep current on new technologies I feel my personal life has been invaded by this technology
.765 .652 .711 .461 .536 .600
.63
I do not know enough about this technology to handle my job satisfactorily I need a long time to understand and use new technologies I do not find enough time to study and upgrade my technology skills I find new recruits to this organization know more about computer technology than I do. I often find it too complex for me to understand and use new technologies I feel constant threat to my job security due to new technologies I am threatened by co-workers with newer technology skills
.675
Techno-invasion
X107 X108 X109 X110 X111 Technocomplexity
X112 X113 X114 X115 X116 X117 X119
Technoinsecurity
X120 X121
Technouncertainty
X122 X123 X124 X125
.646 .700 .724 .574 .600 .77
.614 .623 .603 .663 .549 .482
I do not share my knowledge with my co-workers for fear of being replaced I feel there is less sharing of knowledge among co-workers for fearing of being replaced
.851
There are always new developments in the technologies we use in our organization There are constant changes in computer software in our organization There are constant changes in computer hardware in our organization There are frequent upgrades in computer networks in our organization
.796
Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalization. Reliability analysis method: Cronbach’s alpha.
.80
.79
.813
.837 .804 .720
.81
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Table 2 Factor analysis of organizational internal environment Factor
Items
Describe
Loading
a
Centralization
X301 X302 X303
We believe that managers should take tight control over their subordinates We believe that command and control is the best way to manage We believe that workers should simply follow the directions given by their managers
.801 .861 .716
.71
Innovation
X603 X604 X605
Employees at all levels are rewarded for learning new skills Management encourages experimental mind-set and risk-taking New ideas are easy to be implemented
.796 .807 .711
.81
Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalization. Reliability analysis method: Cronbach’s alpha.
The two aspects of organizational internal environment: centralization and innovation were each measured by three items. Table 2 shows the factor analysis results of these items. They both show satisfactory reliability scores. 4.3. Control variables Existing research has shown that gender, age and educational levels are related to technostress (Baylor, 1985; Farina, Arce, Sobral, & Carames, 1991; Todman & Lawrenson, 1992). Therefore, it is very important to control the effects of these individual-level variables in order to examine the real relationship between the organizational internal environment and employees’ computer-related technostress. Gender is coded 1 if the respondent is male and 0 for female. Age is divided into six categories represented with 1–6: 1 is younger than 26; 2 is from 26 to 35; 3 is from 35 to 45; 4 is from 45 to 55; 5 is from 55 to 65; and 6 is older than 65. The educational level is divided into five categories represented with 1–5: 1 is high school; 2 is two-year college; 3 is four-year college; 4 is graduate degree; and 5 is the rest. 5. 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 T value of the extent of centralization (t = 6.025, p < 0.01) and innovation environment (t = 2.437, p < 0.05) are both significant. Collinearity was not found in the regression model. These results support hypotheses 1 and 2 which predict that the extent of centralization and innovation environments have positive impacts on the level of employee technostress. In order to understand whether the level of technostress is different across various organizational internal environments, we conducted a MANOVA followed by a Scheffe’s test (for pair-wise comparisons). With the organizational environment (centralization vs. innovation) as the classification variable and computer-related technostress (and its components) as the dependent variable, the MANOVA results show that the difference of technostress is statistically significant under different organizational internal environments. The results are shown in Tables 5 and 6. From the analytical results, it can be seen that employees under different organizational internal environments in China do have different perceptions in relation to technostress levels. A low centralization/low innovation organization has the lowest level of overall technostress. In organizations with high centralization/high innovation, the level of overall technostress is the highest. With respect to the five components, techno-invasion has no significant difference and the others do have a significant difference under different organizational internal environments. In any case, the levels of techno-overload,
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Gender Age Educational level Centralization Innovation Overall Technostress * **
Mean
SD
.63 1.77 2.83 7.21 8.98 71.39
.016 .024 .026 .076 .074 .442
1
2 .102(**) .118(**) .005 .038 .036
3
.016 .033 .031 .108(**)
.114(**) .051 .001
4
5
.239(**) .286(**)
.153(**)
P < 0.05. P < 0.01; N = 951.
Table 4 Regression results: technostress and organizational environment Dependent variable: Overall technostress Unstandardized coefficients
Standardized coefficients
Independents
B
S. E.
Beta
t
Sig.
Tolerance
Collinearity statistics VIF
Gender Age Educational level Centralization Innovation Adjusted R2 F
.658 1.434 .281 1.242 .513 0.088 11.468
.946 .624 .597 .206 .210
.028 .091 .019 .242 .098
.695 2.300 .470 6.025* 2.437*
.487 .022 .638 .000 .015
.959 .976 .969 .947 .951
1.043 1.025 1.032 1.056 1.051
* P < 0.05. **P < 0.01; N = 951.
Table 5 MANOVA results: technostress and organizational environment
Techno-overload Techno-Invasion Techno-Complexity Techno-Insecurity Techno-uncertainty Overall technostress
Low centralization/ low innovation
Low centralization/ high innovation
High centralization/ low innovation
High centralization/ high innovation
F value
9.66 24.05 19.35 4.22 11.09 67.69
9.89 23.96 19.98 4.23 12.22 70.12
10.61 25.23 21.40 4.64 11.19 72.63
10.54 25.00 21.58 4.85 12.58 74.54
8.926*** 2.450 12.579*** 10.055*** 12.888*** 12.812***
* P < 0.05; **P < 0.01. P < 0.001; N = 951.
***
techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty are always the lowest in the low centralization/low innovation organizations, and highest in the high centralization/high innovation organizations.
6. 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
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Table 6 Multiple comparisons using Scheffe’s method
Techno-overload Techno-Invasion Techno-Complexity Techno-Insecurity Techno-uncertainty Overall technostress
I
II
III
IV
I; >III
>I; >II n.s. >I n.s.I
>I; >II n.s. >I; >II >I; >II >I; >III >I; >II
‘‘n.s.” means non-significant. I = low centralization/low innovation; II = low centralization/high innovation. III = high centralization/low innovation; IV = high centralization/high innovation.
the innovation environment of an organization also has significant positive relationship with technostress. Hypothesis 1 studies the impact of organizational centralization on technostress. Centralization vs. Decentralization is an important issue of organizational structure. High centralization may bring out problems such as depressing creativity and enthusiasm of employees (Zhou, 1996). Therefore, it is easy for employees to appear burnout and dissatisfied if they are forced to learn the new technology over long periods of time, which creates technostress. On the other hand, in a more decentralized participation based organization, employees will be more willing to accept new technology, so technostress can be reduced. Therefore, companies should balance centralized organizational structures with participation mechanism to avoid high levels of employee technostress. Hypothesis 2 studies the impact of innovation oriented organizational environment on technostress. Innovation has become the main strategy for many firms to keep a competitive edge. Thus firms typically try to foster an innovation oriented organizational culture. However, the analytical results of this study show that employees perceive more technostress under more innovation environments, because they feel that encouraging innovation will lead to a more competitive internal environment. For example, when a company rewards an employee with higher level of computer literacy, the others will be concerned about their inferior position in the resource distribution system, which leads to an increase in technostress. Therefore, company management should provide proper guidance to employees in order to make sure that the organizational goals and individual goals are consistent. This should help alleviate technostress. Finally, the analytical results confirm that the levels of employee technostress are significantly different in organizations that belong to the four different configurations of organizational environment shown in Fig. 1. Organizations in Quadrant I (low centralization/low innovation) produce the lowest level of employee technostress. These may include, for example, many of the small to media sized service firms that have a more decentralized structure and utilizes minimal technology innovation for daily operations. In contrast, organizations in Quadrant IV (high centralization/high innovation) produce the highest level of employee technostress. These firms are often large industry leaders that depend heavily on technology innovations to gain competitive advantages. This study provides a framework for different organizations to assess employee technostress in relation to their internal environment, so that appropriate managerial measures can be develop to counter the negative impacts of technostress. 7. 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., 2004). Within this context, the content and findings in this research have the following theoretical and practical implications:
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7.1. Theoretical implications How to improve job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees and reduce their intention to leave are always hot topic areas. These issues are especially important to technology companies where employees experience constant changes. Through studying organizational factors that affect employee technostress levels, this article explores the antecedents of computer-related technostress and expands our understanding of the technostress phenomenon. The analytical results from this study can become the basis for future research on whether organization structure and culture changes can be used to reduce employee technostress, which in turn improve employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment and reduce the intention of leaving job. For example, the model used to study employees’ intention to leave (Kim, Price, Mueller, & Watson, 1996) does not consider the effect of organization culture and structure. Future studies can introduce an enhanced model by incorporating technostress as important independent variable and organization factors as moderating variables. In addition, there are studies taking technology related stress into the popular Technology Acceptance Model as an important factor affecting the technology adoption process (Raitoharju, 2005). By integrating such research with this study, we can further explore the organizational factors affecting the degree of individual technology adoption. 7.2. Managerial implications This article studies the differences of computer related technostress under different organizational internal environments. It provides strong support for effective employee stress management in various types of organizations. Studies have shown that there is an inverted U relationship between employees’ stress level and work performance. In other words, certain level of stress is beneficial for employees to improve their productivity, but exceedingly high stress level will hinder the performance improvement (Anderson, 1976). The results of this study demonstrate that in an innovative organization with highly centralized power structure, the employees have the highest level of technostress. Therefore, managers in these firms should pay more attention to alleviating employees’ technology related stress, reducing psychological anxiety, and putting them within the positive stress threshold in order to maintain higher job performance. Reducing technostress can be achieved by fostering learning organization, proper delegation and sufficient training. On the other hand, employees in more democratic but conservative organizations have the lowest level of technology related stress. Managers in these firms should pay more attention to the employees with technical capability as their primary career orientation, especially employees who are IT professionals. Schein (1971) argues that employees with technical capability as career orientation concern more about the intrinsic technological content of the work, and from which they get the feeling of achievement. Therefore, management should create the environment and opportunities for these employees to demonstrate their technical capabilities, thus enriching their work, arousing their intrinsic motivation, and resulting in higher level of work performance. 8. 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 future studies. 9. 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
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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 industries, different ownership types, and different marketing strategies. With the rapid growth of ICT applications in China, technostress is becoming a prominent issue for both system users and IT professionals. One area of great research concern is how to make the new ICTs more productive in Chinese firms. The results in this study should be useful for companies operating in China to address the issue of technostress from the perspective of organizational behavior. Acknowledgement This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant # 70372049. References Anderson, C. R. (1976). 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Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 8(2), 215–227. O’reilly, C. A., Chatman, J., & Caldwell, D. F. (1991). People and organizational culture: A profile comparisons approach to assessing person – organization fit. Academy of Management Journal, 34(3), 487–516. Ragu-Nathan, B., Ragu-Nathan, T. S. & Tu, Q. (2002). A Large-scale multinational investigation of techno-stress and its impact on information. Technology (IT) workforce productivity. Research proposal submitted to IT Research division of the US National Science Foundation. Raitoharju, R. (2005). When acceptance is not enough-taking TAM-model into healthcare. In Proceedings of the 38th annual Hawaii international conference on information systems. Robbins, S. P. (1996). Organizational behavior: Concepts controversies and applications (7th ed.). Prentice Hall. Schein, T. E. H. (1971). The individual, the organization, and the career: A conceptual scheme. Journal of Applied Behavior Science, 7(4), 401–426. Schwartz, H., & Davis, S. (1981). Matching corporate culture and business strategy. Organizational Dynamics, 10(1), 30–48. Sheridan, J. E. (1992). Organizational culture and employee retention. Academy of Management Journal, 35(5), 1036–1056. Sosik, J. J., & Godshalk, V. M. (2000). Leadership styles, mentoring functions received, and job-related stress: A conceptual model and preliminary study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21(4), 365–390.
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Tarafdar, M., Tu, Q., Ragu-Nathan, B., & Ragu-Nathan, T. S. (2007). The impact of technostress on role stress and productivity. Journal of Management Information Systems, 24(1), 301–328. Todman & Lawrenson (1992). Computer anxiety in primary school children and university students. British Educational Research Journal, 18(1), 63–72. Thomee, S., Eklof, M., Gustafsson, E., Nilsson, R., & Hagber, G. M. (2007). Prevalence of perceived stress, symptoms of depression and sleep disturbances in relation to information and communication technology (ICT) use among young adults – An explorative prospective study. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(3), 1300–1321. Tu, Q., Wang, K., & Shu, Q. (2005). Computer-related technostress in China. Communications of the ACM, 48(4), 77–81. Weil, M. M., & Rosen, L. D. (1997). Technostress: Coping with technology @WORK @HOME @PLAY. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Weiss, M. E. (1983). Effects of work stress and social support on information systems managers. MIS Quarterly, 7(1), 29–43. March. Wilkins, A. L., & Ouchi, W. G. (1983). Efficient cultures: Exploring the relationship between culture and organizational performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 468–481. Xu, X. D. (2004). Job stress: coping and management. China Aviation Industry Press. Zhou, E. T. (1996). Management: Principles and method. Fu Dan University Press.
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Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh
Technostress under different organizational environments: An empirical investigation Kanliang Wang a, Qin Shu a, Qiang Tu b,* a b
School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China E. Philip Saunders College of Business, Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY 14623, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Available online 24 June 2008 Keywords: Technostress Organizational internal environment Factor analysis
a b s t r a c t 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. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 585 475 2314; fax: +1 585 475 5975. E-mail address: [email protected] (Q. Tu). 0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.05.007
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1. 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).
2. Theoretical background of the technostress concept 2.1. 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, computerphobia, computer anxiety, computer stress, negative computer attitudes, and other similar
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terms. In summary, we define technostress as a reflection of one’s discomposure, fear, tenseness and anxiety when one is learning and using computer technology directly or indirectly, that ultimately ends in psychological and emotional repulsion and prevents one from further learning or using computer technology. 2.2. Components of technostress The existing literature identifies several aspects of technostress, including work overload, individual life invasion, high complexity of technology, and occupational crisis (Brod, 1984; Weil & Rosen, 1997). Tarafdar et al. (2007) further developed and validated a technostress measurement scale based on US data. The scale defined five components of technostress that describe typical situations where the use of computer technology can potentially create technostress. The five components are: (1) Techno-overload: the ICTs pushes employees to work faster; (2) Techno-invasion: the pervasive ICTs invades personal life; (3) Techno-complexity: the complexity of new ICTs makes employees feel incompetent; (4) Techno-insecurity: the job security of employees threatened by fast changing ICTs; and (5) Techno-uncertainty: the constant changes, upgrades and bug fixes in ICT hardware and software impose stress on the end-users. 2.3. Causes of technostress Several other studies also summarized the various causes of technostress. Bloom (1985) states that the scarcity of computer ability and experience are the major causes of computer-related technostress. For example, computer training is often impeded by such fears as breaking the machine, looking foolish or losing control. Doronina (1995) identified several types of computer anxiety: the fear of breaking the computer in some way, a feeling of ignorance or ineptitude, anxiety of new technology and mathematics, and various health threats. Furthermore, there is either a general mistrust of, or too much trust in, computers. Another type of computer anxiety can be characterized as ‘‘time panic”, the feeling of not having enough time, the feeling that it is impossible to understand and remember everything and finish the task on time. The state of time panic is manifested especially when there is a controlled assignment that requires a certain span of time. 2.4. Coping strategies for technostress Coping strategies for technostress have been classified into two major categories: emotion-focused strategies and problem-focused strategies. According to Monat and Lazarus (1991), problem-focused coping refers to the improvement efforts toward the troubled worker/environment relationship. For example, the employees experiencing technostress can seek information about what to do, hold back from impulsive and premature actions, and confront the person or persons responsible for one’s difficulty. Emotion-focused coping refers to thoughts or actions with the goal of relieving the emotional impact of stress. Such strategies of coping do not actually alter the threatening or damaging conditions, but they can make the person feel better. Examples are avoiding thinking about the trouble, denying that anything is wrong, distancing or detaching oneself as in joking about what makes one feel distressed, or taking tranquilizers as an attempt to relax. Problem-focused coping strategies have sometimes been referred to as direct approaches, while emotion-focused coping strategies are indirect approaches. However, these two types of coping strategies also have negative impacts. For instance, although technology-based training is an effective alleviating tactic, when a company frequently trains its employees, the routine work time and leisure time of employees may be reduced, which in turn causes higher stress. Therefore, one must be careful in choosing these coping strategies. A careful literature review shows that with respect to the causes, components and coping strategies of technostress, previous studies have mostly focused on individual level factors but seldom on organizational level factors. On one hand, the cultures and internal environment of an organization have definite influence on job stress perceived by employees (Hannakaisa, Jose, & Mika, 2000; Sosik &
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Godshalk, 2000). On the other hand, organizations must also take measures to avoid or alleviate computer technostress in order to enhance or maintain organizational efficiency and performance (Murphy, 1987). Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the impact of different organizational internal environments on ICT related technostress. It is also necessary to search for appropriate measures in an organization to avoid and alleviate technostress. These two research questions are discussed in more detail in the following sections.
3. 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 objectives are achieved. This study examines how the organizational internal environment influences employee technostress levels. Several studies have examined the influence of organizational internal environment on the job stress of employees. Hendrix, Summers, Leap, and Steel (1995) divided the causes of stress into three categories: organizational internal factors, organizational external factors, and individual characteristics. Organizational internal factors are regarded as the most direct influencing factors of job stress. These include temporal stress, lowered initiative, and decreased participation and control in management/supervision, organizational atmosphere, and organizational conflict. Weiss (1983) pointed out that there were many types of stressors in various organizations that include organizational construction and atmosphere (lack of participation and limitations in jobs) and the relationship of colleagues (collision of ideas that lead to suspicions). Ibancevich and Matteson (1979) developed a ManagerialOriented Stress Model noting that the stresses from the organizational level are as follows: the organizational atmosphere, the management style, the relationship of colleagues, organizational communication, etc. A common theme among these studies is that the internal power structure of the organization influences job stress. Several recent studies have specifically investigated how an organization’s internal power structure influences the stress level of employees. Xu (2004) pointed out that highly centralized power structure in an organization is an important source of stress. Studies show that when employees participate in decision-making, they report a relatively low level of job stress (Mkkelsen, Sasaksvik, & Landsbergis, 2000). Consequently, we think that the centralization of power in an organization will increase employee technostress. Moreover, employees’ lack of participation in the decision-making processes of new technology introduction may also increase computer-related technostress. Therefore, we have the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: The extent of power centralization in an organization has a positive relationship with the level of employee technostress. The existing literatures reported that organizational culture would influence an organization’s operation as a whole and on individual levels (Barney, 1986; Denison & Mishra, 1995; Sheridan, 1992; Wilkins & Ouchi, 1983). Schwartz and Davis (1981) also indicated that an organization’s culture could act as leverage for managers which in turn, affects the decision making process of the organization. However, the main factor that determines people’s social behavior is the subjective consciousness and not a person’s objective surroundings. For example, rewards (money or praise) can be regarded as one method to control the employees, but it can also be regarded as affirmation of the employees’ abilities. Therefore, rewards will have different implications. It is possible that the employees with negative perspective can suffer anxiety or depression, and thus a decline in performance, while the employees with positive perspective will be motivated to improve performance (Ma & Bao, 1999). Will different organizational cultures have different impact on the level of technostress?
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Fig. 1. Organizational internal environment configurations.
According to the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP) developed by O’reilly et al. (1991), the organizational culture is divided into seven dimensions including innovation, stability, respect for people, outcome orientation, attention to detail, team orientation and aggressiveness. This paper focuses on how innovation culture affects the level of employee technostress. Bryan, Ajay, and Simon (2002) surveyed 130 US manufacturing companies and found that the faster the new product ideas were conceived and ratified, the higher the organizational stress level. Generally, an innovation oriented organizational culture often promotes frequent technological changes and internal environment changes, which are important antecedents to individual stress. Therefore, we hypothesize that: Hypothesis 2: The organizational culture of innovation increases the level of employee technostress. Further, we consider the extent of the centralization and innovation environment of an organization as two dimensions to categorize an organization’s internal environment. The extent of centralization is divided into high centralization and low centralization. The innovation environment is divided into high innovation and low innovation. Therefore, four different organizational internal environment configurations can be formed: (I) low centralization/low innovation, (II) low centralization/high innovation, (III) high centralization/low innovation, and (IV) high centralization/high innovation (see Fig. 1). An additional research question is whether employees perceive different levels of technostress under different configurations of organizational internal environment.
4. Research method 4.1. Sample The survey instrument of this research is based on the Technostress Questionnaire developed by Ragu-Nathan and Ragu-Nathan (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 data analysis was performed. When compared with US data, the result does not show significant differences. The components of technostress are the same, but a few items do not converge properly to the intended factor. Therefore, we reworded several items and the final Chinese version was confirmed after the revisions. The survey was distributed to a random sample of 1462 employees in 86 Chinese organizations based in Xi’an, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Taiyuan, Beijing, Shijiazhuang and Shanghai, covering manufacturing, financial, information technology, service industries and government agencies. 28.3% of the organizations have over 500 employees and 62.6% of them have between 500 and 50 employees. Only 9.1% of the organizations have less than 50 employees.
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A total of 1029 questionnaires were completed representing a 70.38% response rate. We carefully checked these questionnaires and removed the ones that are incomplete. A total of 951 usable questionnaires were used in the following analysis. Among the 951 respondents, close to 15% are at supervisor or top management level, and the rest are professional staff; about 34.3% are female; approximately 37% are below 26 years of age, 48% are from 26 to 35, and the rest are older than 36. 4.2. Measures for independent and dependent variables All items in the questionnaire are measured on a 5-point Liker type scale, with 1 indicating ‘‘strongly disagree” and 5 indicating ‘‘strongly agree”. Respondents were asked to circle the appropriate number to indicate the extent to which he/she agreed or disagreed with each statement. We also included perceptive questions about levels of individual productivity and various demographic variables at the end of the questionnaire. Twenty four items were used to measure technostress. Factor analysis extracted five clear factors with satisfactory reliability scores; namely, techno-overload, techno-invasion, techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty (see Table 1). These results confirmed the five technostress creators discussed in the Tarafdar et al. (2007) study.
Table 1 Factor analysis of technostress creators Factors
Items
Describe
Loading
a
Techno-overload
X101 X102 X103 X104 X105 X106
I am forced by this technology to work much faster I am forced by this technology to do more work than I can handle I am forced by this technology to work with very tight time schedules I am forced to change my work habits to adapt to new technologies I have a higher workload because of increased technology complexity I have to spend a lot of time everyday reading an overwhelming amount of e-mail messages I have to work harder because of delays from hardware, software and network problems I spend less time with my family due to this technology I have to be in touch with my work even during my vacation due to the technology I have to sacrifice my vacation and weekend time to keep current on new technologies I feel my personal life has been invaded by this technology
.765 .652 .711 .461 .536 .600
.63
I do not know enough about this technology to handle my job satisfactorily I need a long time to understand and use new technologies I do not find enough time to study and upgrade my technology skills I find new recruits to this organization know more about computer technology than I do. I often find it too complex for me to understand and use new technologies I feel constant threat to my job security due to new technologies I am threatened by co-workers with newer technology skills
.675
Techno-invasion
X107 X108 X109 X110 X111 Technocomplexity
X112 X113 X114 X115 X116 X117 X119
Technoinsecurity
X120 X121
Technouncertainty
X122 X123 X124 X125
.646 .700 .724 .574 .600 .77
.614 .623 .603 .663 .549 .482
I do not share my knowledge with my co-workers for fear of being replaced I feel there is less sharing of knowledge among co-workers for fearing of being replaced
.851
There are always new developments in the technologies we use in our organization There are constant changes in computer software in our organization There are constant changes in computer hardware in our organization There are frequent upgrades in computer networks in our organization
.796
Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalization. Reliability analysis method: Cronbach’s alpha.
.80
.79
.813
.837 .804 .720
.81
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Table 2 Factor analysis of organizational internal environment Factor
Items
Describe
Loading
a
Centralization
X301 X302 X303
We believe that managers should take tight control over their subordinates We believe that command and control is the best way to manage We believe that workers should simply follow the directions given by their managers
.801 .861 .716
.71
Innovation
X603 X604 X605
Employees at all levels are rewarded for learning new skills Management encourages experimental mind-set and risk-taking New ideas are easy to be implemented
.796 .807 .711
.81
Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalization. Reliability analysis method: Cronbach’s alpha.
The two aspects of organizational internal environment: centralization and innovation were each measured by three items. Table 2 shows the factor analysis results of these items. They both show satisfactory reliability scores. 4.3. Control variables Existing research has shown that gender, age and educational levels are related to technostress (Baylor, 1985; Farina, Arce, Sobral, & Carames, 1991; Todman & Lawrenson, 1992). Therefore, it is very important to control the effects of these individual-level variables in order to examine the real relationship between the organizational internal environment and employees’ computer-related technostress. Gender is coded 1 if the respondent is male and 0 for female. Age is divided into six categories represented with 1–6: 1 is younger than 26; 2 is from 26 to 35; 3 is from 35 to 45; 4 is from 45 to 55; 5 is from 55 to 65; and 6 is older than 65. The educational level is divided into five categories represented with 1–5: 1 is high school; 2 is two-year college; 3 is four-year college; 4 is graduate degree; and 5 is the rest. 5. 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 T value of the extent of centralization (t = 6.025, p < 0.01) and innovation environment (t = 2.437, p < 0.05) are both significant. Collinearity was not found in the regression model. These results support hypotheses 1 and 2 which predict that the extent of centralization and innovation environments have positive impacts on the level of employee technostress. In order to understand whether the level of technostress is different across various organizational internal environments, we conducted a MANOVA followed by a Scheffe’s test (for pair-wise comparisons). With the organizational environment (centralization vs. innovation) as the classification variable and computer-related technostress (and its components) as the dependent variable, the MANOVA results show that the difference of technostress is statistically significant under different organizational internal environments. The results are shown in Tables 5 and 6. From the analytical results, it can be seen that employees under different organizational internal environments in China do have different perceptions in relation to technostress levels. A low centralization/low innovation organization has the lowest level of overall technostress. In organizations with high centralization/high innovation, the level of overall technostress is the highest. With respect to the five components, techno-invasion has no significant difference and the others do have a significant difference under different organizational internal environments. In any case, the levels of techno-overload,
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Gender Age Educational level Centralization Innovation Overall Technostress * **
Mean
SD
.63 1.77 2.83 7.21 8.98 71.39
.016 .024 .026 .076 .074 .442
1
2 .102(**) .118(**) .005 .038 .036
3
.016 .033 .031 .108(**)
.114(**) .051 .001
4
5
.239(**) .286(**)
.153(**)
P < 0.05. P < 0.01; N = 951.
Table 4 Regression results: technostress and organizational environment Dependent variable: Overall technostress Unstandardized coefficients
Standardized coefficients
Independents
B
S. E.
Beta
t
Sig.
Tolerance
Collinearity statistics VIF
Gender Age Educational level Centralization Innovation Adjusted R2 F
.658 1.434 .281 1.242 .513 0.088 11.468
.946 .624 .597 .206 .210
.028 .091 .019 .242 .098
.695 2.300 .470 6.025* 2.437*
.487 .022 .638 .000 .015
.959 .976 .969 .947 .951
1.043 1.025 1.032 1.056 1.051
* P < 0.05. **P < 0.01; N = 951.
Table 5 MANOVA results: technostress and organizational environment
Techno-overload Techno-Invasion Techno-Complexity Techno-Insecurity Techno-uncertainty Overall technostress
Low centralization/ low innovation
Low centralization/ high innovation
High centralization/ low innovation
High centralization/ high innovation
F value
9.66 24.05 19.35 4.22 11.09 67.69
9.89 23.96 19.98 4.23 12.22 70.12
10.61 25.23 21.40 4.64 11.19 72.63
10.54 25.00 21.58 4.85 12.58 74.54
8.926*** 2.450 12.579*** 10.055*** 12.888*** 12.812***
* P < 0.05; **P < 0.01. P < 0.001; N = 951.
***
techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty are always the lowest in the low centralization/low innovation organizations, and highest in the high centralization/high innovation organizations.
6. 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
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Table 6 Multiple comparisons using Scheffe’s method
Techno-overload Techno-Invasion Techno-Complexity Techno-Insecurity Techno-uncertainty Overall technostress
I
II
III
IV
>I; >II n.s. >I n.s.
>I; >II n.s. >I; >II >I; >II >I; >III >I; >II
‘‘n.s.” means non-significant. I = low centralization/low innovation; II = low centralization/high innovation. III = high centralization/low innovation; IV = high centralization/high innovation.
the innovation environment of an organization also has significant positive relationship with technostress. Hypothesis 1 studies the impact of organizational centralization on technostress. Centralization vs. Decentralization is an important issue of organizational structure. High centralization may bring out problems such as depressing creativity and enthusiasm of employees (Zhou, 1996). Therefore, it is easy for employees to appear burnout and dissatisfied if they are forced to learn the new technology over long periods of time, which creates technostress. On the other hand, in a more decentralized participation based organization, employees will be more willing to accept new technology, so technostress can be reduced. Therefore, companies should balance centralized organizational structures with participation mechanism to avoid high levels of employee technostress. Hypothesis 2 studies the impact of innovation oriented organizational environment on technostress. Innovation has become the main strategy for many firms to keep a competitive edge. Thus firms typically try to foster an innovation oriented organizational culture. However, the analytical results of this study show that employees perceive more technostress under more innovation environments, because they feel that encouraging innovation will lead to a more competitive internal environment. For example, when a company rewards an employee with higher level of computer literacy, the others will be concerned about their inferior position in the resource distribution system, which leads to an increase in technostress. Therefore, company management should provide proper guidance to employees in order to make sure that the organizational goals and individual goals are consistent. This should help alleviate technostress. Finally, the analytical results confirm that the levels of employee technostress are significantly different in organizations that belong to the four different configurations of organizational environment shown in Fig. 1. Organizations in Quadrant I (low centralization/low innovation) produce the lowest level of employee technostress. These may include, for example, many of the small to media sized service firms that have a more decentralized structure and utilizes minimal technology innovation for daily operations. In contrast, organizations in Quadrant IV (high centralization/high innovation) produce the highest level of employee technostress. These firms are often large industry leaders that depend heavily on technology innovations to gain competitive advantages. This study provides a framework for different organizations to assess employee technostress in relation to their internal environment, so that appropriate managerial measures can be develop to counter the negative impacts of technostress. 7. 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., 2004). Within this context, the content and findings in this research have the following theoretical and practical implications:
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7.1. Theoretical implications How to improve job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees and reduce their intention to leave are always hot topic areas. These issues are especially important to technology companies where employees experience constant changes. Through studying organizational factors that affect employee technostress levels, this article explores the antecedents of computer-related technostress and expands our understanding of the technostress phenomenon. The analytical results from this study can become the basis for future research on whether organization structure and culture changes can be used to reduce employee technostress, which in turn improve employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment and reduce the intention of leaving job. For example, the model used to study employees’ intention to leave (Kim, Price, Mueller, & Watson, 1996) does not consider the effect of organization culture and structure. Future studies can introduce an enhanced model by incorporating technostress as important independent variable and organization factors as moderating variables. In addition, there are studies taking technology related stress into the popular Technology Acceptance Model as an important factor affecting the technology adoption process (Raitoharju, 2005). By integrating such research with this study, we can further explore the organizational factors affecting the degree of individual technology adoption. 7.2. Managerial implications This article studies the differences of computer related technostress under different organizational internal environments. It provides strong support for effective employee stress management in various types of organizations. Studies have shown that there is an inverted U relationship between employees’ stress level and work performance. In other words, certain level of stress is beneficial for employees to improve their productivity, but exceedingly high stress level will hinder the performance improvement (Anderson, 1976). The results of this study demonstrate that in an innovative organization with highly centralized power structure, the employees have the highest level of technostress. Therefore, managers in these firms should pay more attention to alleviating employees’ technology related stress, reducing psychological anxiety, and putting them within the positive stress threshold in order to maintain higher job performance. Reducing technostress can be achieved by fostering learning organization, proper delegation and sufficient training. On the other hand, employees in more democratic but conservative organizations have the lowest level of technology related stress. Managers in these firms should pay more attention to the employees with technical capability as their primary career orientation, especially employees who are IT professionals. Schein (1971) argues that employees with technical capability as career orientation concern more about the intrinsic technological content of the work, and from which they get the feeling of achievement. Therefore, management should create the environment and opportunities for these employees to demonstrate their technical capabilities, thus enriching their work, arousing their intrinsic motivation, and resulting in higher level of work performance. 8. 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 future studies. 9. 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
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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 industries, different ownership types, and different marketing strategies. With the rapid growth of ICT applications in China, technostress is becoming a prominent issue for both system users and IT professionals. One area of great research concern is how to make the new ICTs more productive in Chinese firms. The results in this study should be useful for companies operating in China to address the issue of technostress from the perspective of organizational behavior. Acknowledgement This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant # 70372049. References Anderson, C. R. (1976). Coping behavior as intervening mechanisms in the inverted-u stress performance relationship. Journal of Applied Psychology(61), 30–34. Anne, S. T. (2004), Zhongguancun white collar health survey. Zhongguancun Weekly:
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