How to Prevent Technostress at the Digital Workplace : A Delphi Study

Titelangaben

Berger, Michelle ; Schäfer, Ricarda ; Schmidt, Marco ; Regal, Christian ; Gimpel, Henner:
How to Prevent Technostress at the Digital Workplace : A Delphi Study.
In: Journal of Business Economics. (Mai 2023) .
ISSN 1861-8928
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-023-01159-3

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Abstract

Technostress is a rising issue in the changing world of digital work. It can cause severe outcomes for individuals and organizations. Current literature primarily examines how stressed individuals can overcome acute technostress by activating coping strategies. However, individuals’ technostress often has its reasons in inappropriate technology-environmental settings at work. Thus, organizations face the moral, legal, and economic responsibility to prevent employees’ technostress in the first place. This involves the implementation of prevention measures, which establish technostress inhibitors impeding the occurrence of technostress creators or suppressing negative outcomes from technostress. Although highly sought by organizations, theoretical and practicable knowledge of relevant prevention measures targeting technostress at work is yet missing. We develop comprehensive technostress prevention knowledge based on extant literature and qualitative and quantitative contributions by technostress experts. Our study comprises several methodological steps: a structured literature review, two focus group workshops, and a Delphi study. As a result, we present 24 technostress prevention measures and characterize each measure according to its intended effect, suitable organization sizes, and other facets. Additionally, we provide insights into a prevention measure’s relevance to address specific technostress creators and find that some prevention measures address multiple technostress creators whereas others target only single technostress creators. Our paper contributes to the literature by synthesizing existing technostress prevention studies and structuring prevention measures’ characteristics and effects. For practice, we offer a comprehensive overview of prevention measures that organizations can implement to shoulder their responsibility of mitigating employees’ technostress.