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.