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Appraisal of Email Use as A Source of Workplace Stress: A Person-Environment Fit Approach

DOI:10.17705/1jais.00531
Authors:
Jean-François Stich at ICN Business School
Jean-François Stich
Monideepa Tarafdar at University of Massachusetts Amherst
Monideepa Tarafdar
Patrick Stacey at Loughborough University
Patrick Stacey
Cary Cooper at The University of Manchester
Cary Cooper
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Abstract

The paper develops and tests theory that explains under what conditions the extent of email use is appraised as a stressor. Integrating concepts from information acquisition and person environment fit theories, we hypothesize that individuals appraise their extent of email use as stressful based on the mismatch between their current and desired extents of email use. We define such match as email fit and mismatch as email misfit. We first develop a conceptual framework that associates email misfit with the individual’s experience of three key workplace stressors – work relationship stressor, job control stressor and job conditions stressor. We then develop hypotheses framing the relationship between email fit and misfit, and these stressors. We test our hypotheses by applying quadratic polynomial regressions and surface-response analysis, to survey data obtained from 118 working individuals. The paper makes three theoretical contributions. Firstly, in reporting a theoretical and empirical construction of email fit and misfit and their relationship to workplace stressors, it shows that, email misfit is appraised as stress-creating. That is, both too much and too little email compared to what the individual desires, are associated with stressors. In doing so and secondly, it shows that IT use (in this case, email) is appraised as stressful both when it exceeds (i.e., associated with overload) and fails to meet (i.e., associated with underload), the user’s expectation and preference. Thirdly, it suggests the person environment approach as a theoretically novel way to conceptualize the cognitive appraisal and judgement associated with information under - and over – acquisition, and shows workplace stressors as potentially new effects associated with them.
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Journal of the Association for Information Systems
Vol. 20 No. 2, 2019
pp. 132-160
DOI 10.17705/1jais.00531
APPRAISAL OF EMAIL USE AS A SOURCE OF WORKPLACE
STRESS: A PERSON-ENVIRONMENT FIT APPROACH
Jean-François Stich
ICN Business School, CEREFIGE, Nancy, FR
Monideepa Tarafdar
Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Patrick Stacey
School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK
Cary L. Cooper
Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
The Author Accepted Manuscript of this paper is freely available at:
http://jfstich.com/publication-stress-from-email-use-a-person-
environment-fit-approach
The published version is available on the JAIS website at:
https://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol20/iss2/2/
... Thus, previous work on technostress has included IS use variables directly into their models. For example, Ayyagari et al. (2011) include IS use as a control variable, Stich, Tarafdar, Stacey, and Cooper (2019) investigate email use as a driver of stress, and Maier, Laumer, Eckhardt, and Weitzel (2015) find an effect of social network usage on stress. Similarly, events that happen during IS use, such as technology-induced interruptions, have been assessed as potential sources of stress (Galluch, Grover, & Thatcher, 2015). ...
... Technostress has been theorised as a consequence of IS use (Ayyagari et al., 2011). Thus, various variables relating to IS use have been included both as explanatory variables (e.g., Maier, Laumer, Weinert, & Weitzel, 2015;Stich et al., 2019) and control variables (e.g., Ayyagari et al., 2011) in previous studies. Second, a higher workload may increase both technostress (Ayyagari et al., 2011;Stich et al., 2019) and performance (e.g., Lepine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005). ...
... Thus, various variables relating to IS use have been included both as explanatory variables (e.g., Maier, Laumer, Weinert, & Weitzel, 2015;Stich et al., 2019) and control variables (e.g., Ayyagari et al., 2011) in previous studies. Second, a higher workload may increase both technostress (Ayyagari et al., 2011;Stich et al., 2019) and performance (e.g., Lepine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005). ...
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