[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Management Lab. I'm Sean Hansen from Saunders College of Business at
[00:00:20] Rochester Institute of Technology. And I'm Uri Gal from the University of Sydney
[00:00:25] Business School. Hello Sean. Hello Uri. How are you doing? It's been a while since
[00:00:30] we've talked. So I know all of our loyal listeners have been waiting with bated breath
[00:00:35] for the new episode to drop. It's actually been a while since we've talked off-air as
[00:00:40] well, not just on-air. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, you're a difficult guy to pin down.
[00:00:46] You're very busy. Well, our semester is just wrapping up
[00:00:48] as we head into the summer. You are heading into the winter and so I am in a more enviable
[00:00:54] position. So usually we like to start our discussion with something lighthearted
[00:00:59] but the world is burning down around us. It is, isn't it? It certainly feels like that.
[00:01:05] Yeah. Yeah, it certainly feels like... I don't know how to say this without making a political
[00:01:12] statement, but I guess I don't want to make up a little political statement about what's
[00:01:17] happening in Israel and Gaza because it feels like everything that's happening on US,
[00:01:24] European and even Australian campuses, it feels like it's almost entirely divorced from what's
[00:01:30] happening in Gaza and Israel. It seems like there's a thought bubble that's kind of detached
[00:01:38] itself from that context and taken a life of its own. Yeah, I think that's quite right.
[00:01:44] And the other thing that you see in a lot of the campus discussion or lack of discussion
[00:01:49] in the US because it's mostly chanting and shouting is a lack of nuance. And the reality is that this
[00:01:57] is a very complex geopolitical dynamic with a lot of historical antecedents
[00:02:05] and no one is comfortable with nuance in our current moment. The complete loss of appetite
[00:02:13] for nuance or tolerance for nuance is a real challenge in our current moment.
[00:02:21] Another thing that I thought was very funny was, and again, we talked about this briefly
[00:02:27] off-air before we started. Given the, I guess, the absurdity of some of the recent events
[00:02:33] on US campuses, I can't tell anymore if some of the reporting is real or if it's
[00:02:39] somebody making satirical observations about what is happening. And one of the reporting was that
[00:02:45] in Columbia after they've been, I guess they've been dispersed by the police the other day,
[00:02:52] right? Because they went into campus and arrested a bunch of people and everybody else
[00:02:58] was made to leave. Now they're asking the university to cancel their exams
[00:03:02] because they're too stressed. Yeah, this is one of the things that really kills me
[00:03:08] about a lot of the issues that the people protesting and painting themselves as oppressed
[00:03:15] are some of the most privileged people on the face of the earth. I say this as a graduate of an Ivy
[00:03:19] League institution, but an Ivy League student in 2024 is among the most privileged people
[00:03:26] that have ever walked the face of the earth. And yet they seem supremely
[00:03:34] lacking in self-reflection in that regard. Yeah, anyway, there's much more to say about this, but
[00:03:42] I guess we can move on. It's very stressful. It's a very stressful
[00:03:46] getting stressed out, John. Yeah, set of set of topics. And that is our segue because tonight
[00:03:53] we're going to be talking about techno stress. And I think it's a really important
[00:03:58] domain. And it's one that was very lively in the research literature in the early 2000s
[00:04:06] and maybe a little less lately, but I'm really inclined to think that we're going to see a
[00:04:11] revitalization of it in the wake of the introduction of generative AI and things
[00:04:18] like that because some of the elements that we'll discuss this evening are
[00:04:22] rife for techno stress applications. So maybe before we get into that, we'll just
[00:04:30] give a brief definition of what it is so that everybody knows what we're actually talking
[00:04:34] about. Does that sound okay to you? Sounds good. So it's the situation of stress
[00:04:39] experienced by individuals because of their inability to adapt to the introduction of
[00:04:44] a new technology in a healthy manner. That's the definition from the literature and the
[00:04:50] research literature on what techno stress is. So it's an inability to adapt
[00:04:56] by people to the introduction of new technologies in a healthy way which
[00:04:59] results in a sensation of stress. And so shall we talk about some of the major
[00:05:08] types of techno stress? Yeah, the stressors. I think one of the really valuable things in
[00:05:14] this literature is that it doesn't treat techno stress as a monolithic thing,
[00:05:17] but it says there are different types of stressors that emerge in the use of technology.
[00:05:22] And it seems to me that over the course of this literature, there's sort of
[00:05:26] five that have emerged as the key pieces. But before you get into them, Sean, can I just
[00:05:32] quickly say so in terms of the structure of the conversation, I think we'll try to kind of
[00:05:37] make it useful by talking about the different types of techno stress. But we will discuss
[00:05:42] why we think it's important to talk about this by outlining the implications of these different
[00:05:48] types of techno stress for different types of organizational outcome variables like performance
[00:05:54] and innovation and well-being and stuff like that. Yep. Okay, so go ahead.
[00:06:01] So different techno stressors, right? Things that are causing techno stress. One is
[00:06:07] techno complexity. So this idea that the technologies in place are so complex that it sort
[00:06:13] of inhibits the ability of people, organizational members to make sense out of them. So that's
[00:06:22] one just the complexity is too high. Second is techno invasion, which is this idea of technology
[00:06:27] encroaching upon various aspects of one's life, specifically the work-life balance, which
[00:06:34] we can get into some more. But this idea that it's technology starting to invade all aspects of your
[00:06:39] life, techno overload, which is the idea of technology increasing your workload and making
[00:06:46] you feel like there's too much information or too many tasks to attend to. The fourth
[00:06:53] is techno insecurity, which is the idea of fears about job insecurity created by technology.
[00:06:58] That's the one that of course rises immediately to my mind with regard to the current
[00:07:03] discussions around generative AI adoption. But the idea that the technology might start to
[00:07:10] make your job obsolescent, and so you are insecure in your job. And then lastly is techno uncertainty,
[00:07:17] which is this idea that the pace of change with regard to technology is so high
[00:07:22] that it creates stress around people trying to adapt to continual new technologies as they're
[00:07:28] introduced. Right, so is your view that the main thing that's playing out today, especially in the
[00:07:39] context of generative AI technologies, is the risk or the stress that emanates from the
[00:07:46] potential for people to be replaced by technology? So that's the one that just
[00:07:53] sort of resonates with me because I think a lot of the discussion around the current
[00:07:57] AI expansion and introduction is, holy shit, are we going to have massive
[00:08:05] job displacement, technology driven displacement because of these technologies? And I think we
[00:08:12] are starting to see some of that. Shoot, I'm trying to think of what firm it was, but they
[00:08:18] said that they were able to get this huge jump in efficiencies. And it did come with
[00:08:26] the colloquial term is headcount reduction, meaning we don't need as many people to do
[00:08:31] the same work that we used to. And so I do think that's one of the big drivers, but I don't
[00:08:36] think that's alone. I think that this technology uncertainty is a very real one. People thinking,
[00:08:41] oh, things are changing so fast. How do I keep pace? Yeah, how do I stay in step with the
[00:08:47] new things as they're introduced? Can I? And I think that the one that certainly does
[00:08:54] always resonate with me is the techno invasion, this idea of technology creeping into so many
[00:09:01] aspects of our lives and blurring lines that used to be quite prominent. Are there any of those
[00:09:08] techno stressors that strike you as particularly significant when you look at your own experience
[00:09:16] or your own reflections? So I'm still in the process of learning and trying to figure out what
[00:09:25] I think is going to be the actual impact of generative AI technologies on work displacement,
[00:09:32] because my sense is that there's been so much chatter around these technologies and what they
[00:09:38] can do. But my sense is that so much of this chatter has been manufactured intentionally by
[00:09:45] people who have a vested interest in seeing these tools promoted at scale and used at scale.
[00:09:52] And I still am at least partly skeptical about what these things can do, because I think they
[00:09:59] have some fundamental flaws that inevitably is going to make them, if not completely unsuitable
[00:10:07] for various areas of work that require, for instance, reliability, accuracy,
[00:10:14] and a certain degree of objectivity and optimization towards truth. Like, for instance,
[00:10:21] in medical research or medicine in general, or in a law practice, for instance, I think
[00:10:31] the application of these tools is going to need to be done in a very considered way
[00:10:36] with lots of guardrails and human supervision on top of that.
[00:10:41] Yeah, I think we're definitely at the height of the hype curve. And I think we are with regard
[00:10:47] to a lot of generative AI right now at the peak of inflated expectations. So I agree that it
[00:10:52] remains to be seen where it's going to go. But I think it is creating sort of a new wave
[00:10:57] or a different wave of technology driven stress, work stress.
[00:11:05] Because of people's concern that they might be replaced by an AI tool or for other reasons?
[00:11:11] So yeah, I think it's those two. I think it's the insecurity that my job is going to go away.
[00:11:17] And also the uncertainty piece of how do I constantly
[00:11:26] stay on top of the trends? Can I? It's changing so rapidly. Can I stay on top of the new things?
[00:11:35] Yeah, I gotta say, so I think in some ways the... So I was playing around with...
[00:11:39] I wasn't playing around. I was using GPT-4 yesterday for our research as it were.
[00:11:45] So I gave it a screenshot of a model that we're using in one of our papers
[00:11:50] that talks about the ironic effects that unfold as a consequence of the introduction
[00:11:55] of new technology into an organization. So it's like a PowerPoint diagram.
[00:12:01] And I asked GPT-4 to tell me what the model says and it produced this text that
[00:12:09] really accurately describes the model. Really? Yeah. Interesting.
[00:12:15] So... Well, that's good. That just means we made a good model.
[00:12:20] Really? That's my interpretation. That's how I choose to interpret that.
[00:12:23] Yeah. Perhaps. And of course the model has words in it. So it's not just boxes and arrows,
[00:12:31] but the boxes are labeled and the arrows are labeled. But still the ability of the model
[00:12:36] to interpret this fairly accurately, not perfectly, but fairly accurately was quite impressive.
[00:12:42] Yeah. But like I said before, I think those obvious limitations to these technologies that
[00:12:46] I'm not sure are fixable, like they're profound unreliability. And people who are experts in the
[00:12:54] field way more than I am say that these hallucinations as they're called, it's not a bug
[00:13:01] that you can get rid of. It's just one of the fundamental principles of these LLMs,
[00:13:06] these large language models. And it's not just a matter of feeding them more data or
[00:13:11] changing their training processes in some way. We need a whole new way of thinking about AI
[00:13:16] if we want to get rid of these hallucinations. So all this is to say that I think that there's great
[00:13:21] promises and probably very useful applications of them in the workplace, but in many areas I would
[00:13:26] be very reluctant to just use them willingly without thinking about how we make sure that we
[00:13:31] use them in a way that's more productive than destructive. Absolutely. So why should we care?
[00:13:43] Why should we care about techno stress? So we should care about techno stress because
[00:13:49] first of all, it's a special case of stress. It's a unique type of stress. And as we know,
[00:13:56] too much stress in the workplace and outside of the workplace has very negative consequences
[00:14:01] for the well-being of individuals. And we've had a variety of studies over the years that
[00:14:06] have looked at the negative consequences of techno stress in the workplace. So one particular
[00:14:12] study that comes to mind is a 2015 paper by Tarftar and Bulman and Raghu Nathan.
[00:14:23] And the title of the paper is techno stress, negative effect on performance and possible
[00:14:27] mitigations. It was published in Information Systems Journal. And they point out in that,
[00:14:35] so it's an empirical study that they did. And they look at the consequences of
[00:14:41] techno, different types of techno stress creators, which we'll elaborate in this
[00:14:46] a little bit in a second on the performance of salespeople because they looked at salespeople
[00:14:51] particularly. But also on more, on broader categories of performance in organizations
[00:14:58] like innovation. And they found very clearly that techno stress creators had a negative
[00:15:08] effect both on sales performance and on innovation. And just to clarify, when we talk about
[00:15:16] techno stress creators, they look at the different types of them. And to illustrate,
[00:15:20] I'll just read out a few examples from the paper. So things that were reflective of
[00:15:24] techno stress creators were statements like,
[00:15:30] I'm forced by this technology to work much faster. I spend this time with my family because
[00:15:36] of technology. I don't know enough about this technology to handle my job in a satisfactory
[00:15:41] manner. I feel constant threat to my job security because of this new technology.
[00:15:48] So they really, all those techno stress creators are really the embodiment of the
[00:15:52] stressors that we talked about earlier? Yeah, there's a very close overlap there.
[00:15:58] Yeah. And like I said, they found a very significant negative relationship between those
[00:16:04] techno stress creators and innovation in the workplace. And also negative
[00:16:11] effect between those techno stress creators and sales performance.
[00:16:15] Yeah, I think the focus specifically on sales was very interesting here because I do think
[00:16:20] sales has some unique characteristics. It's highly competitive. You know, sales is one of
[00:16:25] the few places in the contemporary workplace where you still see stack ranking in organizations
[00:16:30] where it's like everyone gets ranked from best to worst. So the competition is very high. The
[00:16:36] expectation of relational pieces, like face-to-face time with clients and things like that is very
[00:16:42] high. Just anecdotally, lots of the people that I know who are in sales were some of the people
[00:16:50] most resistant to the adoption of technology like customer relationship management tools.
[00:16:56] My father-in-law was in sales for many, many years. And when the expectation became that he was
[00:17:02] going to use certain platforms to do his work is when he finally said, I think it's time to retire.
[00:17:09] But is it generational or is it because of the nature of the profession, do you think?
[00:17:14] So I think it's a little of both. I think there is a generational element,
[00:17:17] certainly in that case. But I also think it's in the nature of the profession.
[00:17:21] One of the really interesting things about sales professionals is that the relational piece is so
[00:17:26] high that there's, I think a little resistance to putting data into a system. Sales professionals
[00:17:35] need to, they want their employer to find them irreplaceable. And if they own the relationship
[00:17:43] with a client, then they're irreplaceable. If you put a lot of that information related to that
[00:17:49] relationship into a system, then it makes them a little less irreplaceable. Because then,
[00:17:54] presumably if you left the organization, somebody else could come in and manage that
[00:17:58] relationship as well because you had captured all that information in the system. So I think it
[00:18:04] is one of these domains where some of the hurdles around the mandatory use of technology
[00:18:11] are a little higher. Okay. So I take your point. I will say though that we've seen other
[00:18:17] studies that examined the negative consequences of techno stress on various outcome variables that
[00:18:23] are not specifically related to sales performance. Yeah, right. Job satisfaction, I mean, general
[00:18:29] implications are things like job satisfaction is reduced when the use of technology is leading
[00:18:37] to discernible stressors, like the ones we talked about. Job satisfaction goes down,
[00:18:42] turnover goes up, intention to leave the profession goes up. Again, innovation ability to
[00:18:49] innovate is reduced. So the negative consequences of techno stress are very clear.
[00:18:58] So if we look at this in a bit more detail, one of the other papers that we looked at was by
[00:19:02] Aya Gari et al. Technostress, Technological Antisidens and Implications that was published
[00:19:08] in 2011. And that's one of those papers I believe it was super heavily cited,
[00:19:12] like thousands of different citations. And they looked at different types of techno stress
[00:19:18] characteristics, they call them. So for instance, they looked at the usefulness
[00:19:23] of technology and the less useful people find it the more stressful they find using this technology.
[00:19:30] They looked at things like complexity, which we kind of touched on before. So
[00:19:33] overly complex technologies would tend to cause more stress, reliability, meaning how dependable
[00:19:40] and consistent the technology is. The less it is, the more stress is going to generate,
[00:19:45] how often it changes. So that's something you talked about before as well.
[00:19:51] Presentism, which is an interesting idea. Really interesting. So yeah, you're right. This paper,
[00:19:58] one of the things I really appreciate in this study is that they really delve
[00:20:01] into the characteristics of the technology more than some of the other research. A lot
[00:20:06] of the other research just focuses on the stress that people are experiencing
[00:20:10] based on the technology. But this one really delves into what are the characteristics of
[00:20:13] the technology that have these different implications? And so that
[00:20:17] Yeah, and presentism I thought was particularly relevant in our day and age. So just to kind
[00:20:23] of give a brief definition, that's the degree to which a technology would
[00:20:26] enable individuals to be reachable. And of course, we all are reachable all the
[00:20:31] time these days, for the most part, right? We have phones in our pockets.
[00:20:36] Yeah, and you're expected to be reachable. So what they found in the study again,
[00:20:41] again, that was an empirical piece, maybe not overly surprising, but nonetheless
[00:20:46] interesting and illuminating. The usefulness of technology was negatively
[00:20:51] correlated with work overload. So the more useful people filled the technologies that
[00:20:57] they were using were the less overworked they felt. Reliability, the reliability of
[00:21:04] the technology was also negatively correlated with work overload. Presentism was positively
[00:21:11] associated with homework conflict, which is not surprising, but interesting, with the invasion
[00:21:17] of privacy, with work overload and with rural ambiguity.
[00:21:23] Yeah, which is this idea of what's my job? What's my job supposed to be?
[00:21:29] What's inside and outside of the contours of what I'm expected to do?
[00:21:33] Yeah, I thought the impact of that presenteeism was...
[00:21:36] Is that how you pronounce it?
[00:21:38] Oh, I don't know. I would say presenteeism.
[00:21:42] That sounds like a made-up word.
[00:21:45] It does. Well, it is a bit of a made-up word. It's clearly a neologism, which is not a made-up
[00:21:50] word. But yeah, it definitely is. But that one really resonated with me. So this idea of technology
[00:21:59] enhancing the expectation that you will always be accessible was one of the huge
[00:22:06] antecedents for all these stresses. And maybe the reason this resonates with me is that email
[00:22:13] is the bane of my existence. I hate email. I hate it because I spend hours every day just going through
[00:22:21] email. And there are people who, like, they'll send you an email and you'll get a follow-up or a
[00:22:26] knock on the door 20 minutes later. Didn't you see my email from 20 minutes ago? And it's like,
[00:22:32] yeah, I saw it. I can't attend to it right now. Or maybe I didn't see it because I shut down
[00:22:37] my email for a couple hours every day because if I didn't, I wouldn't get any work done.
[00:22:43] You do that?
[00:22:44] I do. Yeah. I will not look at emails for a couple hours, particularly if you and I are
[00:22:51] research collaborators. If I want to work on a paper, I will shut my outlook because I am
[00:22:58] not going to respond. Email has that old Stephen Covey thing about urgency versus importance.
[00:23:05] Email has an urgency to it. It pops up in the corner of the window and you feel like you have
[00:23:11] to address it. If it pops up, oh, I got to attend to it. And it will just distract you from all of
[00:23:17] the work. So absolutely, I will just close outlook for a couple hours if I feel like I have to box
[00:23:23] some time and actually make some progress on something. I hate email and I'm inundated with
[00:23:27] it. Another thing that I found interesting was the usefulness of technology and how
[00:23:33] it's negatively related to work overload. So the less useful it is, the more
[00:23:39] overworked people feel that they are. And it resonates with me so strongly because we use
[00:23:44] another system at the university called Concur to do our expenses. And it's evident that that
[00:23:52] system was designed by an accountant. We use the system to log our expenses and get reimbursements
[00:24:01] from the university. And it could be something as mundane as a cup of coffee, a meeting. Yes,
[00:24:09] that's right. So it would be five bucks. And to log these five bucks into the system could take
[00:24:17] for somebody who is not a regular user like 15, 20 minutes because it's not so evident what
[00:24:23] you need to do. And it's so and when these things accumulate over the course of a month,
[00:24:28] let's say, it's like you need to devote a couple of hours for this.
[00:24:32] Yeah, which is ironic. It's actually ironic in its outcomes because you're talking about something
[00:24:40] that the original expense was $5. It's costing way more than $5 in your value,
[00:24:49] in the value of your time to enter it into the system. A lot more. Yeah.
[00:24:55] Yeah. This is to me a great example of, I think in a previous episode we talked about Marshall
[00:25:01] McLuhan, the Canadian media theorist. And one of the principles that he talked about was reversal
[00:25:07] that any medium when pushed beyond its usefulness actually inverts the value that it was intended
[00:25:16] for. So in the case of email, the whole premise of email was facilitating communication.
[00:25:22] But it's been pushed to the point where it actually inhibits communication
[00:25:28] because it's way past its usefulness at this point. So I'm realizing that as we're speaking about
[00:25:33] this, and perhaps it's not surprising given the subject matter of which is techno stress that
[00:25:38] we've focused on the negative consequences, at least one paper that we looked at tried to
[00:25:46] create a more balanced view of techno stress and its implications for people and organizations.
[00:25:52] So this is a paper by Kalef Sarkar and Sarkar, MIS Quarterly 2019, sorry 2020. So this is a
[00:26:01] pretty recent paper. And what they try to do there is to, so it's a mixed method
[00:26:08] study that uses both qualitative interviews with people. And on the basis of these
[00:26:13] interviews, they've constructed a theoretical model with a bunch of hypotheses and then they
[00:26:18] tested the hypotheses empirically. And so they look at two different classes of techno stressors,
[00:26:25] which they call challenge and hindrance techno stresses. And so for instance,
[00:26:32] some challenge techno stresses include things like usefulness of the technology,
[00:26:37] support of the technology, and the degree to which it can facilitate involvement in work.
[00:26:47] And hindrance techno stresses include things like what we've talked about before basically,
[00:26:51] unreliability complexity uncertainty insecurity, and overloads exactly what we've talked about
[00:26:57] before. And what they find in the study is that the challenge techno stresses usefulness,
[00:27:03] support and involvement facilitation actually have a positive psychological effect.
[00:27:10] Yeah, the whole framing of the challenge stressors is that they're actually like
[00:27:14] positive stressors, things that you think induce you to maybe be more effective in your job.
[00:27:23] And they basically relate the challenge stressors and the hindrance stressors to two
[00:27:30] different what they call sub processes. One is called, I would pronounce it U stress like
[00:27:35] eudaimonia, right? So E use, S T R E S S, use stress and distress. I love this paper because I
[00:27:46] thought it was a great example of the of real mixed methods, right? Where they wait,
[00:27:52] but let me let me just finish describing the model and the consequences that the model shows.
[00:27:57] So like I said before, the challenge stressors lead to positive psychological responses,
[00:28:05] the hindrance stressors to negative responses. And the positive psychological responses are
[00:28:12] positively correlated with job satisfaction and reduced turnover intention, right? So people
[00:28:18] are less likely to leave their jobs. And negative psychological responses are
[00:28:23] positively related to attrition and consequently to turnover intention.
[00:28:31] And this was specifically in a healthcare context. So I was looking at nurses and the
[00:28:34] use of health information technology. My point was that I struggled a little bit with it as much
[00:28:39] as I really like the study, I think it's really interesting because it takes more
[00:28:44] nuanced approach to stress. Let's not just assume that it's always negative,
[00:28:48] there could be stressors that actually enhance our ability to do our work. And again, it was this great
[00:28:54] real mixed methods approach where they did this rich qualitative analysis that fed into
[00:28:58] theory development and then followed it up with theory testing in a quantitative fashion.
[00:29:05] But I do struggle a little bit because like the use stress and the challenge stressors
[00:29:11] seem like something else to me, right? It seems like they're not really stress, right?
[00:29:16] That it seems like a mislabeling. Even the phrase challenge stress, challenge stress is
[00:29:21] positive stressors. Well, I don't know when I hear challenge, I don't feel like it's necessarily
[00:29:29] positive. Well, I guess you could look at it as like a continuum where you have too little
[00:29:33] stimulation in the one end of it and too much stimulation on the other end of it. And I
[00:29:37] guess too much would be stress and too little would be negative stress. And so if you look at
[00:29:44] it that way, I guess it could make the point that some stress is positive and other stress is negative.
[00:29:50] Yeah. One of the fascinating things in there in that study was they had hypothesized that tech
[00:29:58] support, right? So technical support for the nurses again in this case because it's in a healthcare
[00:30:03] context would create a positive psychological response, right? Would be one of those
[00:30:10] challenge techno stressors that has a positive side. But the finding was that it was significant,
[00:30:16] but inverse of what they hypothesized. So actually greater technical support actually
[00:30:23] reduced, it was negatively correlated to positive psychological response. So more tech
[00:30:30] support actually led to less positive response, which is pretty fascinating to me.
[00:30:36] How do you explain that?
[00:30:38] Well, I can tell you how they explained it, which was that in this particular case because
[00:30:42] it's in a healthcare context that you have different language games. So the people in
[00:30:47] the nursing role and the people in the tech support role, they have different language, right?
[00:30:52] They speak different languages. And so the tech support actually was sort of like increasing
[00:30:58] negative stress because it was like they're speaking a different language and they were
[00:31:02] making the respondents feel like maybe they were not understanding or it was in a zone that
[00:31:09] made them uncomfortable. And so that was their explanation, but it was quite intriguing to me.
[00:31:14] It kind of makes me think of the old Saturday Night Live bit. Jimmy Fallon used to have this
[00:31:20] character called Nick Burns, your company computer guy. And it was a stereotypical but
[00:31:28] not so inaccurate rendition of a tech guy, like a tech support guy where he treats everyone
[00:31:34] like they're idiots because they don't understand the technical features of things.
[00:31:39] And that was immediately what I thought of with regard to that where the tech support can actually
[00:31:45] increase your negative stress rather than alleviate it.
[00:31:49] Oh, to me for non-American listeners, that reminded of,
[00:31:55] it was the name of that show, The IT Crowd.
[00:31:58] Oh yeah, yeah.
[00:31:58] I think you've ever seen that?
[00:32:00] Yeah, that was a hilarious show. That was a British show, right?
[00:32:03] Yeah, I think it was British. And that's a bunch of people that certainly speak a
[00:32:09] different language to, I would imagine what nurses are used to hearing in the workplace.
[00:32:15] So that's an interesting explanation, those different language games
[00:32:22] as both can say, would call them.
[00:32:25] Another interesting distinction that another paper that we looked at made, so that's a paper by
[00:32:32] Nasjuk et al.
[00:32:34] Nasjuk et al. Thank you.
[00:32:36] This was in Aegis, sorry, European Journal of Information Systems.
[00:32:40] Yeah, and they did a meta-analysis, meaning they analyzed existing studies on techno stress
[00:32:46] to synthesize the findings from these studies. And one of the interesting distinctions
[00:32:51] that they made there was between psychological and behavioral effects of techno stress.
[00:32:58] And by and large across the board, what they found was that the psychological effects of
[00:33:03] techno stress were a lot more significant or that's not the right word statistically
[00:33:09] speaking, there were stronger in magnitudes.
[00:33:14] Yeah, and also more initially prominent meaning you have the psychological response
[00:33:19] right away, it might impact your behavior down the line,
[00:33:24] like behavior being intention to continue to use something, but the psychological response
[00:33:29] is much more immediate. One of the other distinctions they drew, which I thought was quite
[00:33:35] interesting, was between organizational technology use and private technology use.
[00:33:41] And for the private technology use, they looked at a lot of the literature around
[00:33:45] social networking systems, right? So Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the stresses that were
[00:33:54] induced there. They still measured them against the same stressors we looked at elsewhere,
[00:33:59] but it was kind of intriguing because what you see from that meta-analysis is that the impacts
[00:34:04] of those different stressors are not the same in an organizational context as in a private
[00:34:10] context. Some of them are much more pronounced in an organizational context like your work life
[00:34:16] and others were more pronounced in the private use.
[00:34:19] So can you give a couple of examples?
[00:34:23] Sure, so for example, techno overload was more pronounced in private usage than it was
[00:34:31] in organizational life or let me see if I can get one that's a really stark contrast.
[00:34:36] Yeah, the behavioral impacts of techno overload are significant, have a fairly high
[00:34:43] significance in the private life like whether or not you're going to use something.
[00:34:47] Again, intentionally used as a behavioral one. Well, if you feel overloaded, you can choose
[00:34:52] not to use systems in your private life, but it didn't have as much of an impact in the
[00:34:57] organizational context which is not that one's not so surprising because at work you're
[00:35:04] told what systems you're going to use and you just have to use it. I can choose not to use Facebook,
[00:35:08] I can't choose not to use the learning management system on campus or something like that.
[00:35:15] One of the other ones that was really interesting was techno invasion.
[00:35:18] Techno invasion has a much bigger impact in people's private lives than in their
[00:35:23] organizational lives which again might just be like I have it's part of my work life,
[00:35:27] I just have to use this thing whereas if it's technology in my private life,
[00:35:32] I feel like it's going to feel like it's encroaching upon my existence more.
[00:35:38] Yeah, interesting. I want to go back to a point you made before about the consequential order
[00:35:46] rather of the effects of techno stress. So just to reiterate what you said before to make sure
[00:35:51] that I got this correctly and that everybody else understands this the same way. So the
[00:35:56] psychological effects of techno stress precede the behavioral effects.
[00:36:01] Right? So the adverse psychological effects of feeling more stressed out would cause us to behave
[00:36:09] or change our behavior in a certain way following the interaction with the techno stresses like
[00:36:16] invasion of complexity or uncertainty or whatever the case might be. And I think that's
[00:36:21] that's a good observation and it also explains why we see more pronounced effects for more pronounced
[00:36:27] psychological effects than behavioral effects. Right? Because just because we have or just because
[00:36:33] we feel a certain way or think a certain way about what has happened to us and about what
[00:36:37] we want to do as a consequence, not all these thoughts and feelings translate into actual
[00:36:42] behavior. There's a there's a right some of these drop out along the way and don't actually
[00:36:48] get realized, which explains why the behavioral effects are smaller on average than the psychological
[00:36:54] effects. So Sean main takeaways from the conversation. So I mean, main takeaways are it's
[00:37:03] definitely real, right? Like this is something people are dealing with in their organizational
[00:37:07] lives and we need to think about the degree to which technology is inducing stress that
[00:37:13] will have bad outcomes for the organizations that we run from a managerial perspective. I
[00:37:20] think the question is what do you do about it? How can you mitigate techno stress? Right? And I
[00:37:24] think there were a couple that emerge in the literature and and some again are mixed, right?
[00:37:30] So one of the one of the recommendations seems to be seems to focus on tech support. But as
[00:37:36] we've seen from the one study, that can be a double edged sword, right? Like depending on
[00:37:41] the nature of the tech support that could actually increase stress rather than mitigate it.
[00:37:45] The one that really jumped out to me in this regard was this idea, I think the phrase was
[00:37:50] involvement facilitation. Yeah. Meaning getting people involved in the design or redesign of
[00:37:56] systems has a big impact. So if people have an opportunity to say to make recommendations for
[00:38:02] improvements in the technologies they're using, you know, could we add this feature? Could we
[00:38:07] change this process that dramatically reduces sensations of techno stress, right?
[00:38:15] And the psychological impacts of techno stress. So giving people avenues for voice in the design
[00:38:22] and redesign of the tools they use is a big one. Yeah. Another thing I would say is that
[00:38:30] it's kind of a no brainer, I guess in a way. But at the same time, I've seen so many instances
[00:38:34] of this not happening, which is when you implement a system make sure that it's actually usable
[00:38:41] to the people who are meant to use it. But it's not just a matter of getting people involved in
[00:38:46] in the design process, which by the way rarely happens in many contexts, despite people like you
[00:38:51] and me and other IS professors talking about this for I don't know 20, well more than 20 years,
[00:38:57] we've talked about this for 20 years, but I'm sure people have talked about it before us.
[00:39:01] It doesn't happen very regularly. But also I see systems being implemented that are just
[00:39:07] buggy and they look like they've been designing 1984 using a Commodore 64 or something.
[00:39:15] Yeah. It's just it pains me to see this and it happens all the time.
[00:39:20] And so, like I said, it's kind of a no brainer make sure that the technology that you put
[00:39:24] in place first of all, it works properly that it's not buggy because many times it is.
[00:39:30] And that it actually correlates and help people get their job done. Like we said before,
[00:39:35] yeah, the example I gave about the expense acquittal system that we have,
[00:39:41] it was it's evident it wasn't designed by anybody who understands academic work.
[00:39:48] It was designed by an accountant and with the jargon and the language of accountants.
[00:39:53] I think this focus on design is actually really important. One of the things I always tell my
[00:39:58] students is every information system is designed to make someone's life easier.
[00:40:03] The problem is that that person might not be you, right? So if it's designed by the
[00:40:08] accounting team to make their lives easier, it can actually move in efficiencies around
[00:40:12] within the organization without creating more efficiency overall. And so I think a core
[00:40:19] focus on designing with an eye to users, you know, the whole empathy user empathy
[00:40:25] and user centered design, I think is a big element of addressing techno stress. How do we make sure
[00:40:31] that we're getting the voices of the people who will actually have to use these tools
[00:40:36] in the design and implementation of them? Yeah. On the other hand, another thing that I would
[00:40:43] say one of the big techno stresses that we talked about was the pace of change of technology,
[00:40:52] which divorced from anything else from everything else people find stressful. Change is stressful.
[00:40:57] So some changes is good, of course. And we need to stay adaptive to our environment for sure.
[00:41:04] But too much change can create unnecessary stress. And many leaders when especially
[00:41:11] when they start out in a new job, they feel like they need to, you know, make a statement
[00:41:16] and leave them work. And the introduction of new systems is oftentimes the way people do that.
[00:41:22] And of course, it's meant to support other changes that they might be introducing into the
[00:41:25] organization. But I would encourage people to engage in these activities with in a more
[00:41:32] judicious way and really think about whether another change or another new system is really
[00:41:38] necessary because it's pretty easy for people to get not just stressed out about this, but also
[00:41:44] cynical about, oh man, we have to like just another damn thing. And other training session or
[00:41:52] relearn something that I've already known it was working perfectly fine. Why don't you do
[00:41:56] this now? And it's just, man. And I have training though. Training was one of the
[00:42:02] the solutions that came up a lot in this literature. Meaning again there,
[00:42:05] I think the phrase that was used repeatedly was literacy facilitation, but basically giving people
[00:42:11] tools to continue to learn and increase their expertise with the system. And so I do think
[00:42:18] that it's kind of a mundane solution. But I do think that's the kind of thing that
[00:42:22] managers need to be thinking about. How do we make sure that it's not just one and done type
[00:42:26] training? Okay, you've learned this new system, but making resources accessible for people to
[00:42:32] learn on their own. Continue to explore certain technologies on their own so that they can increase
[00:42:39] their own comfort level with the tools. Yes, but I would also argue that it has probably has
[00:42:44] diminishing returns if you have to do it over and over and over again for different types of
[00:42:48] technologies where the benefits of these new technologies is not immediately obvious.
[00:42:53] Yeah, well, that's so I agree. I do agree with that. But that's where rather than having
[00:42:57] to do it over and over again where you're mandating training, I'm thinking more enabling self-learning.
[00:43:03] So giving people access to resources that they can use or not use as they see fit. If they want
[00:43:11] to learn more about a technology, give them access to resources that they can explore
[00:43:17] rather than say okay, you're going to do a training on Monday for two hours or something
[00:43:21] like that where it's that mandated type of thing. One last recommendation that occurred to me
[00:43:28] that is not in the literature that I at least I didn't notice it anywhere is a policy one,
[00:43:34] particularly around this idea of techno invasion, maybe creating organizational
[00:43:39] policies and expectations around presenteeism, telling people look, our policy is after
[00:43:47] a certain time of day, you don't need to be checking emails or you don't need to be on
[00:43:53] the team chat. My wife uses it at her job uses a system where it's like a Slack type channel
[00:44:00] where it's just a chat board that's always available and people will often reach out to
[00:44:05] others through that. Well, that's one where I think it would be very important to set the
[00:44:09] expectation that if you're sending a chat at 6 p.m., people aren't going to respond to it
[00:44:15] until the next morning. And you just have to learn how to live with that. And so I think
[00:44:21] setting those types of communication channels that enable people to maintain certain boundaries,
[00:44:25] I think would be really big for increasing job satisfaction.
[00:44:28] And I think for leaders it's really important in these situations to lead by example,
[00:44:33] because it's very easy to say don't respond to emails after 6 o'clock or the
[00:44:37] texts after 6 o'clock, but then you respond. It reminds me of that curb episode about
[00:44:46] Ben Still's birthday where he says, don't bring a gift.
[00:44:50] But really, he expects everybody to bring gifts. And when Larry David comes into the party
[00:44:55] without a gift, he gets really upset with them. So I didn't see that episode,
[00:45:00] but I can already visualize Larry David's response. He said don't bring a gift.
[00:45:07] Yeah. Lead by example. Yeah. I think that's a good takeaway.
[00:45:12] All right. Shall we talk about what went down today? Absolutely.
[00:45:35] So why don't you start, because I think I already gave away mine.
[00:45:39] Oh wait, so do you have a new one? I might need to come up with one.
[00:45:44] Okay, I do have a new one. Okay, so you get started.
[00:45:47] It's a death.
[00:45:49] A what?
[00:45:52] A death.
[00:45:53] A death.
[00:45:55] Someone died on this day in 1972. How should I give you a hint? It's someone who had an
[00:46:04] incredibly significant impact in the United States for many generations because of his leadership
[00:46:12] of a federal agency. Oh.
[00:46:16] For decades. He led the agency for decades.
[00:46:21] Is it one of the surveillance agencies in the US?
[00:46:24] It is.
[00:46:25] Is it the FBI?
[00:46:27] It is the FBI.
[00:46:28] Yeah, I don't remember. It's no Hoover, is it?
[00:46:31] It is. J. Edgar Hoover. Good job. You got to it. J. Edgar Hoover died on this day in 1972.
[00:46:41] How old was he when he died?
[00:46:43] That's a good question. I'll have to go back and look.
[00:46:47] Did he die over natural causes?
[00:46:48] He died on the same day. This was another one I was thinking about giving you.
[00:46:51] Somebody was born on the same day of the J. Edgar Hoover died.
[00:46:55] Well, many people were born that day.
[00:46:57] Well, a famous person.
[00:47:00] Okay. What domain were they famous?
[00:47:03] Actor and formerly athlete.
[00:47:10] Actor and formerly athlete.
[00:47:11] Big action star in the United States was born on May 2nd, 1972.
[00:47:16] Were they a professional athlete?
[00:47:19] Yes.
[00:47:20] Would I know them? Were they famous for being an athlete before they became an actor?
[00:47:26] Yes, but athlete might be throwing you off a little bit.
[00:47:31] Very famous actor.
[00:47:34] And they're still alive, presumably.
[00:47:36] Action star.
[00:47:38] 1972. So, 52-year-old action star as of today.
[00:47:45] I'm thinking of any names. I mean, I'm thinking Schwarzneger,
[00:47:50] Sly, who's much older.
[00:47:52] Yeah, those guys are older.
[00:47:53] Bruce Willis, who's older.
[00:47:56] Jason Straubin, who's, I believe, English.
[00:47:58] He might be around the same age though.
[00:48:01] Yeah, I don't know.
[00:48:02] Dwayne The Rock, Johnson.
[00:48:04] Oh, The Rock.
[00:48:05] So, The Rock was born on the same day that J. Edgar Hoover died.
[00:48:09] Right. What kind of athlete was it before he became an actor?
[00:48:12] He was a wrestler.
[00:48:14] Professional wrestler. That's why I said it might throw you off.
[00:48:17] Yeah, that's...
[00:48:18] Okay.
[00:48:19] I think he played, or at least he was on a team in the NFL for a little while,
[00:48:23] but I don't know that he had a career there.
[00:48:26] Okay, so my question to you is from the realm of politics.
[00:48:33] Okay.
[00:48:35] And it happened tomorrow, in fact, not today.
[00:48:40] So, it would have been the fourth of May
[00:48:44] 1979. What significant political event happened on that day,
[00:48:51] then fourth of May 1979?
[00:48:54] I'll give you another hand.
[00:48:56] In a...
[00:48:56] Iran hostage crisis?
[00:48:58] In a European country.
[00:49:00] Oh, okay.
[00:49:04] So, this would have been right around the Iran hostage crisis.
[00:49:07] So, it's got to be the end of the Carter administration,
[00:49:13] European country, still during the Cold War.
[00:49:20] So, it could have been something...
[00:49:21] And was this maybe the early emergence of solidarity in Poland
[00:49:27] or something like that?
[00:49:30] No, Western European country.
[00:49:32] Okay.
[00:49:37] Do you want another hand?
[00:49:39] Was it...
[00:49:40] So, I think 79 is too early for the marriage of Charles and Diana,
[00:49:45] but it would have been close on that time.
[00:49:47] So, you've got the country, right?
[00:49:49] Margaret Thatcher was elected.
[00:49:52] Correct. She came into office on the fourth of May 1979.
[00:49:56] Yeah, you don't really elect prime ministers, that's true.
[00:49:59] Yeah.
[00:50:00] What do you mean?
[00:50:03] You elect a party and then the party...
[00:50:04] Oh, yeah.
[00:50:05] They don't vote for prime ministers, right?
[00:50:08] Nice.
[00:50:09] Okay.
[00:50:10] There are no societies on the individuals.
[00:50:14] I am given my own libertarian leanings.
[00:50:20] I think Margaret Thatcher was great.
[00:50:23] Lots of people still bash her now,
[00:50:25] but I think she did some important things in the UK.
[00:50:31] Of course, lots of people of my ethnic derivation are not fans.
[00:50:36] She was not great through the Irish.
[00:50:40] On that happy note?
[00:50:41] Yes.
[00:50:43] Let's call it a day.
[00:50:45] Good discussion.
[00:50:46] Thanks, Ori.
[00:50:47] Talk again soon.