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Technostress Experiences Under Hybrid Work Conditions in South Africa: Causes and Coping Mechanisms

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, ISSN: 1865-1356, Vol: 504 LNBIP, Page: 141-163
2024
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Conference Paper Description

During the COVID-19 pandemic, South African organisations required their employees to work from home, which caused technostress. The stress while working from home was believed to be partly influenced by feelings of COVID-19-related anxiety. Since the hybrid model was adopted in some South African organisations, it was possible that there were new and different experiences of technostress within the hybrid workplaces. The purpose of this study was to understand how employee technostress experiences changed during the adoption of hybrid work models in South African organisations. Furthermore, the research intends to explain the underlying causes of these new experiences and how employees were coping with these new instances of technostress. A qualitative study was conducted under respondents working under a hybrid model and who use ICTs for work purposes. The findings reveal several hybrid working specific causes of technostress, including instances of stressful workstation setups, office disruptions and power outage issues as a result of loadshedding (rolling power blackouts). Loadshedding related stress appears to be a specific South African issue. To deal with technostress, employees adopted reactive and proactive coping behaviours driven by problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies respectively. This paper contributes by highlighting the stressors and coping mechanisms used in the relatively under-researched hybrid working scenario. The study was limited with regard to its sample size, representation and time frame. Future research is suggested to compare the different modes of working over a longer time period and within a larger diversity of organisations, including SMEs.

Bibliographic Details

Shelley Dowrie; Jean Paul Van Belle; Marita Turpin

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Business, Management and Accounting; Engineering; Computer Science; Mathematics; Decision Sciences

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