Understanding the Psychological and Behavioral Implications of Organizational ICT Affordances

Abstract

This paper examines the implications of two affordances of organizational ICTs – i.e., visibility and persistence – for individual’s subjective stress and supplemental work practices. In doing so, we contribute to research on technological affordances in organizational contexts by looking at psychological and behavioral outcomes beyond those directly tied to specific technology uses or communication processes. Furthermore, we demonstrate that different affordances may yield distinct individual outcomes. Utilizing latent change modeling we demonstrate how visibility and persistence affordances relate to changes in subjective stress and supplemental work over time. The findings highlight that visibility is associated with increases in supplemental work, but not in subjective stress. Conversely, persistence is found to reduce increases in subjective stress and supplemental work. As such, we argue that visibility may pressure workers into extending their workdays and weeks, while persistence may operate as an important resource for employees providing stability and reducing subjective stress and supplemental work practices.