Pressure, emotional demands and work performance among information technology professionals within South Africa: the role of exhaustion and depersonalisation

Abstract

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, known as the digital revolution, is posing many challenges to organisations that find it hard to keep up with the rate at which the technological world is expanding and transforming. Organisations are relying more and more on information technology (IT) professionals in order to keep abreast of technological advancements. More specifically, IT professionals play an important role in organisations as they are at the core of organisational operations. The rapid rate of technological transformation and the reliance on these professionals have led to high work demands (i.e. work pressure and emotional demands), which may impact their performance and well-being. The aim of this study was to identify whether work pressure and emotional demands have an impact on individual work performance through exhaustion and depersonalisation among IT professionals within South Africa. Research on the individual work performance of IT professionals, specifically in South Africa, is limited in number and scope. In this study, a cross-sectional survey design was utilised with 296 IT professionals in South Africa. The Job Demands-Resource Scale (JDRS), the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Individual Work Performance Questionnaire (IWPQ) were used. Results from structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated that emotional demands and depersonalisation impacted task performance, positively and negatively respectively. Depersonalisation positively impacted counterproductive work behaviour and work pressure positively impacted exhaustion. However, the results indicated that there were no significant relationships between work pressure and task performance and counterproductive work behaviour. Additionally, the results indicated that there were no significant relationships between work pressure and depersonalisation or between emotional demands and exhaustion and depersonalisation. Lastly, exhaustion did not have a significant relationship with task performance or counterproductive work behaviour. Organisations and managers should design and implement interventions to optimise emotional demands; and to minimise work pressure and also depersonalisation which in turn can impact IT professionals' work performance.