IS Employees’ Stress and Outcomes at Work

Huichih Wang

, Sheng-Jim Fan

and Her-Sen Doong

Institute of Information Management, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

Institute of Healthcare Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan

Department of Management Information Systems, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan

Keywords: Information Systems, Absenteeism, Occupational Stress.

Abstract: The problem of excessive occupational stress faced by IS employees may accelerate their intention to quit,

which may ultimately cause companies difficulty in finding skilled professionals and a huge cost in training

newcomers. A handful of past studies in the information system discipline have examined this connection

from the perspective of job satisfaction to some extent. However, employees’ behavioral outcomes resulting

from their excessive stress are not limited to intention to quit: job performance and absenteeism, which were

significantly associated with organizational effectiveness, were unfortunately overlooked in the IS studies.

To broaden the knowledge in IS personnel management, the current study has incorporated the literature

from psychology and organizational behavior to propose a theoretically based model. Findings will be able

to provide fruitful implications for future researchers and practitioners.

1 INTRODUCTION

Working in information system (IS) companies is

regarded to be one of the most stressful occupations

(Thong and Yap, 2000). In fact, back in 1985,

Baroudi argued that skilled IS employees are the

precious resource to companies and urged IS

executives to pay great attention to the effective

management of employees’ job satisfaction and

intention to quit. But IS employees today are facing

a more challenging workload from their

organizations as compared with thirty years ago. For

example, Ahuja et al. (2007) have proposed the term

“IT road warriors” for these workers, who have to

work at the client’s company while representing

their own employer. They have to deal not only with

technical problems at the client’s site, but also with

communication problems between the client’s

personnel. It is thus clear that the increasing job

demands may seriously affect IS employees

psychologically or physiologically, and their

intention to quit is indeed more dominant than ever

and must become an issue of particular relevance for

today’s top executives.

Past studies mainly limited to how stress may

influence the intention to quit (e.g., Baroudi, 1985;

Igbaria and Greenhaus, 1992). However, intention to

quit is not the only behavioral outcome of

employees who are under long-term occupational

stress. Before they quit the company, their job

performance and absenteeism may seriously harm

organizational effectiveness, which represent a

considerable loss of organizational resources. For

example, an estimate of almost 12% of the United

States of America’s (USA) Gross National Product

(GNP) and 10% of the United Kingdom’s (UK) GNP

is lost because of stress-related absenteeism and

turnover (Cooper and Cartwright, 1996). A further

investigation reflecting the current work situation of

IS employees should be conducted. Based on these

research goals, the current study has proposed a

theoretically based model integrating the literature

from psychology and organizational behavior to shed

light on this important issue of IS personnel

management.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND

RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

2.1 Occupational Stress and Burnout

Occupational stress refers to a situation wherein job-

related facets interact with workers to modify (i.e. to

disrupt or enhance) their psychological conditions so

337

Wang H., Fan S. and Doong H..

IS Employees’ Stress and Outcomes at Work.

DOI: 10.5220/0003988003370340

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Data Communication Networking, e-Business and Optical Communication Systems (ICE-B-2012),

pages 337-340

ISBN: 978-989-8565-23-5

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

that the individual’s mind is forced to deviate from

regular functioning (Beehr and Mewman, 1978).

Burnout is seen as a reflection of the cumulative

effect of several role stressors in the occupational

environment (Hunsaker, 1986). Ashill et al. (2009)

further reported that occupational stress leads to

employee burnout based on a survey of 170

employees working at a bank’s call center.

Consistent with this, Griffin et al. (2010) found that

occupational stress was positively related to

employees’ job burnout. Pawlowski et al. (2007)

also found, after in-depth interviews with twenty IS

employees, that these employees’ occupational

stress was related to their burnout. Based on these

discussions, it is proposed that:

 P1: Occupational stress will positively

impact on burnout.

2.2 Occupational Stress and Job

Satisfaction

According to Griffin et al. (2010), job satisfaction is

an IS employee’s subjective feeling reflecting the

level to which his/her demands are being achieved by

a specific job. More specifically, job satisfaction can

also be referred to as an IS employee’s affective

response resulting from a comparison of the actual

outcome of his/her job with those outcomes that

he/she expected or wanted (Cranny et al., 1992).

Carley (1997) and Goss and Gupta (2003) also

revealed that occupational stress resulting from role

conflict and ambiguity would decrease job

satisfaction. More recently, Rutner et al. (2008)

surveyed 161 IS employees and consistently

uncovered that their occupational stress is negatively

related to job satisfaction. Based on these studies, it

is proposed that:

 P2: Occupational stress will negatively

impact on job satisfaction.

2.3 Job Performance and Absenteeism

Job performance refers to formally requested effects

and behaviors that directly serve the organizational

goals (Motowidlo and Van Scotter, 1994). Burnout

is argued to harm efforts at work and decrease

personnel’s motivation to seek support (Maslach and

Jackson, 1981). Burnout is also found to directly

affect job performance, since the personnel may feel

that they have little control over the work situation,

and consequently lose confidence in dealing with

problems at work (Fogarty et al., 2000). Singh et al.

(1994) indicated that burnout was inversely related

to individuals’ job performance. More importantly,

both Klein and Verbeke (1999) and Ashill et al.

(2009) have asserted that burnout significantly

diminishes employee’s job performance. Based on

these studies, it is proposed that:

 P3: Burnout will negatively impact on job

performance.

Absenteeism refers to the IS employee’s reported

number of absences from work. It has been widely

evidenced that absenteeism is likely to be an

outcome of job burnout across different professions,

such as nurses (Gil-Monte, 2008), telecom managers

(Schaufeli et al., 2009), and student (Bekker et al.,

2005), but empirical examinations among IS

employees have unfortunately been neglected. Both

Diestel and Schmidt (2011) and Cordes and

Dougherty (1993) have demonstrated that burnout

symptoms and absenteeism are related. Yaniv (1995)

indicated that workers’ burnout will induce their

absence at work. Accordingly, it is proposed that:

 P4: Burnout will positively impact on

absenteeism.

Farrell and Stamm (1988) undertook a meta-

analysis of factors correlated to employee absence.

They found that job satisfaction has an inverse effect

on employees’ absence. In support of this, Martin

and Miller (1986) argued that satisfied employees

should behave differently from dissatisfied

employees in terms of their productivity, absences

and turnover. More recently, Siu (2002) spent eight

months surveying 243 nurses in Hong Kong and

reported that job satisfaction is a significant negative

predictor of absenteeism. Based on these discussions,

it is proposed that:

 P5: Job satisfaction will negatively impact

on absenteeism.

2.4 Intention to Quit

IS has long been regarded as one of the most

stressful professions, and Baroudi (1985) conducted

pioneering research arguing for the importance of

turnover management for IS managers. Based on a

study of 229 IS professionals from nine different

companies from New York and Boston, Baroudi

(1985) indicated that the more satisfying the

employees perceived their jobs to be, the lower their

quit intentions would be. Consistent with this,

Igbaria and Greenhaus (1992) reported that IS

employees’ job satisfaction negatively influenced

their intention to quit, according to a survey of 517

ACM members. More recently, Rutner et al. (2008)

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also interviewed 171 employees from IS firms and

indicated an inverse relationship between their job

satisfaction and intention to quit. It is thus proposed

that:

 P6: Job satisfaction will negatively impact

on the intention to quit.

3 CONCLUSIONS

Building on the existing literature, this study’s

propositions are as follows: (1) to refine the

relationship between stress and job satisfaction from

a uni-dimensional perspective instead of the multi-

dimensional approach used by past studies; (2) to

verify the satisfaction-quit intention link, which was

first examined in 1985, across IS employees in more

recent settings so as to reflect the current

occupational demands and technological change; (3)

given that the job nature has become more complex

and demanding than ever, it is important to expand

the understanding of how occupational stress may

influence employee behaviors from the existing

viewpoint of intention to quit, and move to facets

that have been overlooked by past IS research, such

as job performance and absenteeism. As these two

facets significantly influence organizational

effectiveness as a whole, this study’s model has shed

light on this crucial issue and pointed out new

research areas for further studies; (4) to provide a

more complete blueprint for IS managers to evaluate

the aggregation effects that employees’ personal

stress may have on the organizational operation as a

whole.

In sum, the theoretical contribution of the current

study is twofold. First, it extends past studies by

introducing important outcomes such as job

performance and absenteeism, which have great

impacts on organizational effectiveness, from the

disciplines of psychology and organizational

behavior. Second, it examines stress using a uni-

dimensional approach that differs from past studies.

By doing so, the current study is able to focus on

clarifying the relationships between stress and

important outcomes including burnout, job

satisfaction, job performance, absenteeism and

intention to quit. In this way, future studies may take

a step further and empirically examine the

relationships proposed in the current study to enable

IS executives to benefit from understanding their

valuable employees better.

As regards the managerial implication, this study

broadens the existing knowledge of the

consequences that occupational stress may bring

about at the organizational level and provides IS

executives with different tools to evaluate such

impact. That is, they may need to re-consider the

importance of observing employees’ job

performance and absenteeism from the viewpoint of

burnout and job satisfaction in order to help

employees to best manage their psychological or

physiological balance.

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