Purpose

The fear of the pandemic, confinement at home and the need to work created a unique situation. The pandemic catalyzed work-from-anywhere practice by adopting information and communication technologies (ICT) across all industries. While ICT saved organizations, it increased technostress among the workforce. A better understanding of the adverse effects of ICT usage might enable organizations to manage the mental well-being of the workforce. While technostress is gaining increasing interest, scholarly work investigating the dimensions of technostress and its impact on creating stress across various employee demographics and industry types is missing. Contrary to the prevalent assumptions, the authors theorized and tested the adverse moderation effect of the home-work interface on the linkage between technostress dimensions and stress. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

Design/methodology/approach

The study captures dimensions of technostress and the resulting stress at work using a survey-based analysis of 881 working employees in India, representing multiple industries and functions.

Findings

The study indicates that techno-overload, techno-complexity and techno-invasion significantly impact employees during the pandemic. The authors further found that the home-work-interface is a powerful factor in understanding the complex linkage between dimensions of technostress and its outcomes.

Research limitations/implications

Based on the Conservation of Resources Theory and the Job-Demand-Resources model, this study highlights the adverse impact of this trend on employee well-being. However, the study suffers from a cross-sectional research design. The technostress research has focused primarily on static, at-premise environments and mostly on high ICT usage industries. Due to the pandemic, it has neglected the impact of various technostress dimensions across employee cohorts subjected to rapid technology-enabled working. Further, most studies focus on the voluntary choice of remote work. Employees struggle with the unexpected and involuntary shift to technology-enabled remote work. This study contributes to the literature by examining the consequences of technostress in the context of non-voluntary remote work. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, this study highlights the adverse effect of organizational home-work interface in influencing ICT-created stress.

Practical implications

The increasing use of ICT enables telecommuting across the workforce while increasing organizational productivity. Due to the pandemic, these trends will likely change the future of work permanently. To minimize employee stress, practitioners need to reconsider the dimensions of technostress. Further, the study cautions against the prevalent interventions used by practitioners. While practitioners facilitate a home-work interface, it could have adverse consequences. Practitioners may consider the adverse consequences of home-work interface while designing organizational policies.

Social implications

This study during the pandemic is crucial as research forecasts the likelihood of other cataclysmic events, such as future pandemics and political or climate change events, which may sustain technology-driven remote work practices and remain a feature of the future workplace. Hence understanding the implications of the dimensions of technostress would help organizations and policymakers to implement necessary interventions to minimize employee stress.

Originality/value

The present study examines the dimensions of technostress across multiple industries and job functions in an emerging market marked by a high economic growth rate and an Eastern cultural context. This study presents the dark side of excessive ICT adoption and indicates how organizations and HRM practices can help mitigate some of these effects.

中文翻译：

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“技术正在杀死我！”：组织家庭工作界面对技术压力和工作压力之间联系的调节作用

目的

对大流行的恐惧、居家隔离和工作的需要创造了一种独特的情况。这场流行病通过在所有行业采用信息和通信技术（ICT）促进了随时随地工作的实践。虽然信息通信技术拯救了组织，但它增加了员工的技术压力。更好地了解信息通信技术使用的不利影响可能使组织能够管理员工的心理健康。尽管技术压力越来越受到人们的关注，但研究技术压力的维度及其对不同员工群体和行业类型产生压力的影响的学术工作却缺失。与普遍的假设相反，作者理论化并测试了家庭-工作界面对技术压力维度和压力之间联系的不利调节作用。

设计/方法论/途径

该研究通过对代表多个行业和职能的印度 881 名在职员工进行调查分析，了解了技术压力的各个维度以及由此产生的工作压力。

发现

研究表明，技术超载、技术复杂性和技术入侵对大流行期间的员工产生了重大影响。作者进一步发现，家庭-工作界面是理解技术压力维度及其结果之间复杂联系的一个强大因素。

研究局限性/影响

基于资源守恒理论和工作-需求-资源模型，本研究强调了这一趋势对员工福祉的不利影响。然而，该研究的横断面研究设计存在问题。技术压力研究主要集中在静态的本地环境以及高 ICT 使用率的行业。由于大流行，它忽略了受快速技术支持的工作的员工群体中各种技术压力维度的影响。此外，大多数研究都集中在远程工作的自愿选择上。员工们因意外且非自愿地转向技术支持的远程工作而苦苦挣扎。这项研究通过研究非自愿远程工作背景下技术压力的后果，为文献做出了贡献。与普遍的假设相反，

实际影响

信息通信技术的日益普及使员工能够进行远程办公，同时提高组织生产力。由于大流行，这些趋势可能会永久改变工作的未来。为了最大限度地减少员工压力，从业者需要重新考虑技术压力的维度。此外，该研究还警告从业者不要采用普遍的干预措施。虽然从业者促进了家庭作业界面的发展，但它可能会产生不利的后果。从业者在设计组织政策时可以考虑家庭作业界面的不利后果。

社会影响

大流行期间的这项研究至关重要，因为研究预测了其他灾难性事件的可能性，例如未来的大流行和政治或气候变化事件，这些事件可能会维持技术驱动的远程工作实践，并仍然是未来工作场所的一个特征。因此，了解技术压力各个维度的影响将有助于组织和政策制定者实施必要的干预措施，以最大限度地减少员工压力。

原创性/价值

本研究探讨了以高经济增长率和东方文化背景为特征的新兴市场中多个行业和工作职能的技术压力维度。这项研究展示了过度采用信息通信技术的阴暗面，并指出组织和人力资源管理实践如何帮助减轻其中一些影响。