Thesis title: Motivational and Health Impairment Processes Related to Technological Development at Work
It is widely recognized that technological innovation is changing how employees perform their work and interact with their work environment characteristics, influencing their engagement and well-being. The present dissertation includes three contributions that aim to provide a comprehensive and nuanced picture of how employees perceive technological implementations in their workplace and how they influence their work experiences.
In Study 1, I investigated the reciprocal relationship over time between technostress, workload, and exhaustion to highlight the longitudinal processes that lead technology to be perceived as a potential stressor. In Study 2, I explored the nuanced nature of technology perceptions by disentangling them in technology as a resource and as a demand and investigating how they differently activate motivational and health impairment processes at two levels of analysis, stability and variability (fluctuations). Finally, in Study 3, I examined the reciprocal relationship between techno-overload, positive emotions, and well-being with a fluctuation-focused point of view.
Overall, results suggest that technology may play a double role in the work context, as a resource that enhances professional growth and engagement, and as a demand that fosters exhaustion and reduces employees’ well-being. In Study 1, I found that technostress increases workload and exhaustion. Thus, employees may perceive technology as a stressor when they have a negative appraisal of their workload and are experiencing resource loss (i.e., exhaustion). In Study 2, I found that positive and negative technology perceptions may simultaneously coexist and differently activate motivational and health impairment processes at both levels of analysis
(stability and variability). In Study 3, I found that positive emotions may help employees build new resources, foster their well-being, and, consequently, help them better deal with technological demands over time.
Implications for theory and practice of the present dissertation, as well as limitations and suggestions for future research, are discussed.
Keywords: technostress, technology as resource, positive emotions, work engagement, well-being, burnout, longitudinal, RI-CLPM