Deliberate or Instinctive? Proactive and Reactive Coping for Technostress

Abstract

Employees in organizations face technostress that is, stress from information technology (IT) use. Although technostress is a highly prevalent organizational phenomenon, there is a lack of theory-based understanding on how IT users can cope with it. We theorize and validate a model for deliberate proactive and instinctive reactive coping for technostress. Drawing from theories on coping, our model posits that the reactive coping behaviors of distress venting and distancing from IT can alleviate technostress by diminishing the negative effect of technostress creators on IT-enabled productivity. The proactive coping behaviors of positive reinterpretation and IT control can help IT users by influencing the extent to which reactive coping behaviors are effective and by positively influencing IT-enabled productivity. The findings of a cross-sectional survey study of 846 organizational IT users support the model. The paper provides a new theoretical contribution by identifying ways in which organizational IT users can cope with technostress.

Key words and phrases:

• technostress
• technostress coping
• proactive coping
• reactive coping
• information systems use

Notes

1. ‘Stressors’ or ‘stress creators’ are conditions wherein the factors in the external environment are appraised as posing demands that exceed an individual’s resources in meeting them. These two terms are used inter-changeably in the literature (e.g. [14]) and we do likewise in this paper. When the factors in the external environment are related to use of IT, the stressors or stress creators are known as technostress creators [56].

2. We note here that proactive coping encompasses two theoretically distinct aspects that deal with stressful events [2, 20, 58]. The first is about continual preparation for ongoing stressful situations by strengthening one’s ability to cope. The second is related to anticipating stressful situations and aims at their prevention before they take place [20]. We focus on the first view in this paper because workplace technostress situations are ongoing and somewhat inevitable; thus, they cannot be prevented as espoused by the second view.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henri Pirkkalainen

Henri Pirkkalainen ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of Information and Knowledge Management in Tampere University, Finland. His research interests lie in technostress, dark side of information systems use, and knowledge management. His work has appeared in such journals as Information Systems Journal, International Journal of Information Management, Computers in Human Behavior, and others.

Markus Salo

Markus Salo ([email protected]) is a researcher at the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. His research interests include technostress, dark side of technology use, and user behavior. He has published in such outlets as Information Systems Journal, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, International Journal of Human‐Computer Interaction, and the proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems.

Monideepa Tarafdar

Monideepa Tarafdar ([email protected]; corresponding author) is Professor of Information Systems and Co-Director of the Centre for Technological Futures at Lancaster University (Management School), United Kingdom. She has published extensively on the topic of technostress. Dr. Tarafdar serves as Senior Editor at Information Systems Journal, Associate Editor at Information Systems Research, and as Editorial Board member at Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of AIS, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems.

Markus Makkonen

Markus Makkonen ([email protected]) is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. His research interests include the adoption and diffusion of information and communication technology innovations, business models, business intelligence, and consumer behavior, especially in the context of electronic commerce, digital contents, as well as sports and wellness technologies. His research has been published in such venues as Communications of the Association for Information Systems, and the proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems and European Conference on Information Systems.