The Role of Mindfulness in Mitigating the Negative Consequences of Technostress

Abstract

IT offers significant benefits both to individuals and organisations, such as during the Covid-19 pandemic where technology played a primary role in aiding remote working environments; however, IT use comes with consequences such as ‘technostress’ – stress arising from extended use of technology. Addressing the paucity of research related to this topic, in this study, we examine the role of mindfulness and IT mindfulness to both mitigate the impact of technostress and alleviate its negative consequences; revealing that mindfulness can reduce technostress and increase job satisfaction, while IT mindfulness can enhance user satisfaction and improve task performance. Moreover, our work sheds light on the under-researched relationship between mindfulness and IT mindfulness; showing that the latter has a stronger influence on IT related outcomes; revealing the valuable role of mindfulness and IT mindfulness in the workplace and offering important implications to theory and practice.

Overcoming the “Dark Side” of Technology—A Scoping Review on Preventing and Coping with Work-Related Technostress

“…Among the included studies, there was a large majority of quantitative cross-sectional studies ( n = 48) [ 6 , 9 , 10 , 13 , 21 , 22 , 24 , 46 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , 92 ] as can be seen in Table S6 in the Supplementary Materials . In total, 53 studies followed a quantitative methodological approach [ 6 , 9 , 10 , 13 ,…”

“…It becomes apparent that many studies did not provide (complete) information on the participants’ gender, while in seven studies [ 6 , 7 , 48 , 79 , 94 , 100 , 102 ], no demographic information was provided regarding gender. In the 52 studies reporting the age of participants, it ranged from 17 to 75 years, with a mean of 40.62 years [ 6 , 7 , 9 , 10 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 46 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 77 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , ...…”

“…However, all included studies were conducted with employees from different industries who use or rely on ICT in their daily work. Thus, most of the included samples were simply categorised as “employees using ICT at work” ( n = 30) [ 7 , 10 , 23 , 46 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 63 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 71 , 73 , 74 , 77 , 79 , 81 , 82 , 84 , 85 , 88 , 90 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 101 ]. Other larger groups were employees at educational and research institutions ( n = 6) [ 48 , 58 , 59 , 73 , 76 , 91 ], salespeople or sales professionals ( n = 6) [ 6 , 9 , 24 , 56 , 83 , 87 ], knowledge workers ( n = 5) [ 7 , 22 , 66 , 97 , 98 ], and public sector employees ( n = 3) [ 15 , 55 , 64 <...>…”

“…Other larger groups were employees at educational and research institutions ( n = 6) [ 48 , 58 , 59 , 73 , 76 , 91 ], salespeople or sales professionals ( n = 6) [ 6 , 9 , 24 , 56 , 83 , 87 ], knowledge workers ( n = 5) [ 7 , 22 , 66 , 97 , 98 ], and public sector employees ( n = 3) [ 15 , 55 , 64 ]. The mean work experience among those studies reporting it ( n = 28) was 9.15 years [ 6 , 9 , 13 , 21 , 24 , 54 , 56 , 57 , 59 , 60 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 71 , 72 , 75 , 80 , 83 , 84 , 86 , 87 , 89 , 91 , 93 , 95 , 97 , 103 ]. More study characteristics are provided in the Supplementary Materials in Table S6 .…”

On the Interplay of Data and Cognitive Bias in Crisis Information Management

“…Especially in data-critical environments like CIM, where responders have to handle various information systems, techno-stress can further increase stress and susceptibility to biases. Mindfulness has been found to alleviate some of this stress (Ioannou & Papazafeiropoulou, 2017 ) and therefore is a promising strategy to reduce the susceptibility to cognitive bias in CIM. Mindfulness means being more aware of the context and content of the information one is engaging with (Langer, 1992 ).…”