Impact of technostress on productivity and overall life satisfaction of managers working at a ferrochrome smelting company
Abstract
Information Communication Technology (ICT) is revolutionising how we do business.
ICT advances (which includes technology like computers, tablets, and cell phones)
allow for information flow like never before, both in speed and volume. Unfortunately,
the characteristics of ICT, which makes the technology so alluring to individuals and
organisations (i.e. reliability, presenteeism and accuracy), are also causing stress to
the users, more specifically, "technostress". The term technostress was first used by
clinical psychologist Craig Brod in 1984, who described it as "a modern disease of
adaption caused by the inability to cope with new computer technologies healthily". It
has been shown that technostress can affect productivity and overall life satisfaction.
The central purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of technostress on
the productivity and overall life satisfaction of managers working at ferrochrome
smelters.
The following conceptual-theoretical frameworks were used to frame the research
factors: a Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (TMSC) for technostress (which
assisted in defining technostress as consisting of five techno-stressors), the Self-
Determination Theory for life satisfaction and the Goal-Setting Theory for productivity.
This research also aimed to: measure the validity and reliability of the technostress,
productivity and life satisfaction measuring instruments in the South African context;
establish the levels of technostress, productivity and life satisfaction of managers and
determine if there are practically significant differences in the mean scores of
technostress, productivity and life satisfaction between gender, age groups,
operational units and management levels. The research was approached from a
positivistic paradigm, utilising a cross-sectional research design. Google forms were
used to administer the questionnaire, and 106 valid responses were received. The
data were analysed using the IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).
The findings reveal that the instruments used to measure productivity and life
satisfaction is reliable and valid in the South African context. The factorial structure of
the technostress instrument was not perfectly aligned with the literature. All techno-stressors
loaded as expected, except for techno-insecurity (two of the items loaded
better to a sixth factor). Despite this, the instrument was still reliable, with a Cronbach
alpha of 0.699. The results indicate that managerial employees experience low levels
of technostress. They report high levels of IT-enabled productivity and also score
above average for life satisfaction. No practically significant differences exist for any
of the research factors between males and females. The degree to which techno-complexity
and techno-uncertainty are experienced seems to be increasing with age.
Practically significant differences exist between the research factors between the
organisational units. From the results, it is clear that technostress does not affect
productivity. Although a negative correlation exists, it is practically non-significant. The
correlation coefficient between technostress and life satisfaction is -0.245. This result
indicates that a negative relationship exists between technostress and life satisfaction,
in that an increase in technostress leads to a decrease in life satisfaction. It is noted
that this correlation is approaching the effect of being practically visible. These results
are very much aligned with the existing literature.
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