The dark side of technology: examining the impact of technology overload on salespeople

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how technology overload (system feature, information, and communication overload) influences salespeople’s role stress (role conflict and role ambiguity), effort to use technology and performance. This research examines whether these relationships are linear or quadratic. It also examines the moderating effect of salespeople’s technology self-efficacy. Design/methodology/approach Salespeople at a national company providing services to small and medium companies were surveyed via an online instrument to measure key constructs and control variables. Over 200 usable responses resulted; structural equation model was used to analyze the data. Findings Results show that dimensions of technology overload had linear and/or quadratic relationships with role stress, effort to use technology and performance. Salesperson’s technology self-efficacy moderated the relationship between technology overload, effort to use the technology and performance. Practical implications The benefits from new technology are not always linear. Managers should regulate the timing of technology improvements, as well as the availability of information, communication and system features, to reduce role stress and enhance efforts to use technologies. Originality/value Drawing on the job demand and resource model, this research demonstrates that technology used as a job resource will aid the salesperson and company; however, when technology overload exists, it becomes a job demand with the potential to enhance role stress and decrease salesperson performance.

The dark side of sales technologies: how technostress affects sales professionals

“…There are other potential moderators that might be suggested by other sales technology research. Among these might be self-efficacy (Delpechitre et al, 2019) and overload (Delpechitre et al, 2019;Rom an and Jaramillo, 2018) and technological compatibility (Rom an and Jaramillo, 2018). This would further our understanding of technostress works and help to delineate the various paths by which it influences outcomes.…”

“…However, the implementation of these sorts of systems comes with a number of "dark effects." Studies have focused on the adoption of sales technologies due to the alarming failure rates associated with them (Bush et al, 2007;Delpechitre et al, 2019;Honeycutt, 2005;Robinson et al, 2005;Williams et al, 2017). Among the causes are possible negative issues associated with their use.…”

Digital Social Innovation: A Preliminary Portfolio of Competencies for School Social Workers

“…The relationship between DSI and digital education is strategic, since digital education is essential to create DSI applications. Furthermore, digital education is also necessary to mitigate the disadvantages and negative effects that the development of technology can produce (Elhai, Levine, Dvorak, & Hall, 2016;Delpechitre, Black, & Farrish, 2018;Kim, 2017;Rotondi, Stanca, & Tomasuolo, 2017), including technoference, the everyday disturbances in interaction between partners caused by technology (McDaniel & Galovan, 2018).…”

The Dark Side of Using Online Social Networks

“…The dark side of information technology (IT), specifically online social networks (OSNs), is important for information systems (IS) research and has become a more salient issue in recent years (Delpechitre et al, 2019;Polites et al, 2018;Turel et al, 2018). The dark side of IT use has been described as the negative effects of IT use on individuals, such as controversies, risks and other adverse consequences (Silic & Back, 2016).…”

“…In other studies, the dark side of OSNs has been used to refer to negative effects such as plagiarism, misrepresentation, time pressure, addiction, and psychological harm (Garcia & Sikström, 2014). Other studies in the literature have characterized negative phenomena such as technology overload (Delpechitre et al, 2019), technostress (Brooks et al, 2017;Tarafdar et al, 2011), interruptions (Addas & Pinsonneault, 2015) and low performance (X. Cao et al, 2018;Lu et al, 2015) as the dark side of OSNs.…”