T he research reported in this paper studies the phenomenon of technostress, that is, stress experienced by end users of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and examines its influence on their job satisfaction, commitment to the organization, and intention to stay. Drawing from the Transaction-Based Model of stress and prior research on the effects of ICTs on end users, we first conceptually build a nomological net for technostress to understand the influence of technostress on three variables relating to end users of ICTs: job satisfaction, and organizational and continuance commitment. Because there are no prior instruments to measure constructs related to technostress, we develop and empirically validate two second order constructs: technostress creators (i.e., factors that create stress from the use of ICTs) and technostress inhibitors (i.e., organizational mechanisms that reduce stress from the use of ICTs). We test our conceptual model using data from the responses of 608 end users of ICTs from multiple organizations to a survey questionnaire. Our results, based on structural equation modeling (SEM), show that technostress creators decrease job satisfaction, leading to decreased organizational and continuance commitment, while Technostress inhibitors increase job satisfaction and organizational and continuance commitment. We also find that age, gender, education, and computer confidence influence technostress. The implications of these results and future research directions are discussed.

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Monideepa Tarafdar is an associate professor of information, operations, and technology management at the university of Toledo. She has an undergraduate degree in physics and a graduate degree in telecommunications and electronics engineering from the university of Calcutta, India. her ph.D. is in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. her current research interests are in managing individual and organizational adjustments required for effective information technology use, information systems planning for Net-enabled organizations, information systems-business alignment, and business innovation using information systems. her research has appeared or is forthcoming in T.S. ragu-naThan is a professor of information systems and operations management at the College of Business administration at the university of Toledo. he holds a ph.D. in management information systems from the university of pittsburgh. his current research interests are in information systems strategy, quality issues in information systems, and the use of information technology in manufacturing, supply chain management, and e-commerce. his research has been published in several journals, including abSTracT: Organizational use of information and communications technologies (ICT) is increasingly resulting in negative cognitions in individuals, such as information overload and interruptions. recent literature has encapsulated these cognitions in Downloaded by [New York University] at 00:

Technostress—defined as stress that individuals experience due to their use of Information Systems—represents an emerging phenomenon of scholarly investigation. It examines how and why the use of IS causes individuals to experience various demands that they find stressful. This paper develops a framework for guiding future research in technostress experienced by individuals in organizations. We first review and critically analyse the state of current research on technostress reported in journals from the IS discipline and the non‐IS disciplines that study stress in organizations (eg, organizational behaviour and psychological stress). We then develop our framework in the form of the “technostress trifecta”—techno‐eustress, techno‐distress, and Information Systems design principles for technostress. The paper challenges 3 key ideas imbued in the existing technostress literature. First, it develops the argument that, in contrast to negative outcomes, technostress can lead to positive outcomes such as greater effectiveness and innovation at work. Second, it suggests that instead of limiting the role of IS to that of being a stress creator in the technostress phenomenon, it should be expanded to that of enhancing the positive and mitigating the negative effects of technostress through appropriate design. Third, it lays the groundwork for guiding future research in technostress through an interdisciplinary framing that enriches both the IS and the psychological stress literatures through a potential discourse of disciplinary exchange.

We investigate the effect of conditions that create technostress, on technology-enabled innovation, technology-enabled performance and overall performance. We further look at the role of technology self-efficacy, organizational mechanisms that inhibit technostress and technology competence as possible mitigations to the effects of technostress creators. Our findings show a negative association between technostress creators and performance. We find that, while traditional effort-based mechanisms such as building technology competence reduce the impact of technostress creators on technology-enabled innovation and performance, more empowering mechanisms such as developing technology self-efficacy and information systems (IS) literacy enhancement and involvement in IS initiatives are required to counter the decrease in overall performance because of technostress creators. Noting that the professional sales context offers increasingly high expectations for technology-enabled performance in an inherently interpersonal-oriented and relationship-oriented environment with regard to overall performance, and high failure rates for IS acceptance/use, the study uses survey data collected from 237 institutional sales professionals.