Understanding employees responses to technostress: A Stress Coping Model of employee adaptation

Abstract

In the context of digital transformation, techno-stressors, which are caused by rapid changes in technology and the inability to meet the changing competencies, have been examined to have a negative impact on organization and employees. Despite the urgency of investigating effective coping strategies to handle techno-stress, this topic is hardly underexplored. In addition, the impact of task adaptation behavior on employees’ job performance still remains unclear. Thus, this study has developed a research model by applying the coping theory with cognitive appraisal and employing multiple task adaptation behaviors to examine how employees deal with stress. The purpose of this study is to explore how employees cope with technostress caused by digital technology and the effect of task adaptation behavior on their performance. The research team adopted a quantitative method and employed Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique by using SmartPLS to examine the measurement and structural model through the dataset of 323 respondents. The findings have shown that when getting exposure to techno-stress, employees tend to adopt disturbance handling strategies and make suitable adaptation behaviors, which eventually enhances job performance. The results of this study are of great value for expanding both theoretical research and practical applications of coping strategies in relation to technostress and coping strategies.