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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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Measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many employees to work from home; a novel situation in which individuals used information systems (IS) more intensively to stay in touch with coworkers. This novel IS use situation affected individuals differently and resulted in both positive and negative outcomes. Recent calls for research advocate for clarification regarding the conceptualisation of appraisal, which explains different individual responses to objectively equal environments. In particular, challenge-hindrance-research does not differentiate between primary and secondary appraisal. Therefore, it remains unclear how individual capability beliefs, such as self-efficacy, affect challenge and hindrance IS use appraisal. We conduct an empirical study with 1,553 German employees to investigate these relationships and the positive and negative outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that challenge and hindrance IS use appraisal, and remote working self-efficacy are interconnected, yet different constructs. We find that self-efficacy is related to challenge IS use appraisal, rather than hindrance IS use appraisal. Further, challenge IS use appraisal is a driver for performance in a remote working environment. We conclude that there are stressful aspects of IS use that are not influenced by an individual’s belief in their abilities. Our study emphasises the importance of remote working self-efficacy and IS use appraisal to mitigate techno-distress and increase performance during remote work.
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... When this equilibrium is disturbed or becomes imbalanced, people become stressed. This state of disturbance or imbalance between a person and his/her environment is referred to as a misfit (Edwards, 1996;Edwards and Cooper, 1990) and is thought to be based on the subjective evaluation of whether one's needs are not being met or that one is incapable of meeting the expectations and demands of the environment (Ayyagari et al., 2011;Chilton et al., 2005;LeRouge et al., 2006;Stich et al., 2019b;Wang et al., 2020;Lee et al., 2016). ...
... Appendix 3). When attended to, demand appraisals have been explained primarily through one of three theoretical lenses (transactional theory of stress, P-E fit theory and cybernetic theory), in which individuals perform a subjective evaluation of their environment in terms of opportunity or threat(D'Arcy et al., 2014(D'Arcy et al., , 2018Galluch et al., 2015;Liang et al., 2019), (mis)fit(Ayyagari et al., 2011;Stich et al., 2019b;Chilton et al., 2005), or (in) equilibrium(Stich et al., 2019a) ...
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... Therefore, organizations will need to retain qualified ITP to improve their core capabilities because qualified information systems (IS) will be a useful asset to increase the core capability of organizations, and they need to be maintained well by qualified ITP [6]. However, ITP always have a high desire to extend their knowledge beyond the IT/IS field [6,7]. If they do not have much chance to learn the state of the art, they will leave the organization sooner or later [5,8]. ...
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... The two theories most frequently used are the Conservation of Resources (COR) and Person-Environment Fit (P-E Fit). Scholars believe that both theories fundamentally explain stress theories on motivation and balance between humans and their environment (Ayyagari et al. 2011;Califf & Brooks 2020;Stich et al. 2019). In comparison, other scholars did not concentrate on a particular theory. ...
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