Coping with technostress in the software industry: Coping strategies and factors underlying their selection

IF 3.7 2区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Journal of Systems and Software Pub Date : 2025-01-10 DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2025.112341

Valtteri Siitonen , Saima Ritonummi , Markus Salo , Henri Pirkkalainen , Saija Mauno

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background

Software industry employees are subject to the harmful effects of technostress, which is caused by information technology use.

Aim

The aim of the current study is to understand how software industry employees cope with technostress and how their employers can best support these coping efforts.

Method

We employed the critical incident technique using a qualitative approach and collected our data through a questionnaire. In total, we collected and analyzed 715 real-life accounts of coping with critical technostress incidents from employees working in the industry.

Results

We identified 27 strategies for coping with technostress and provided a comprehensive categorization of them. Additionally, we uncovered novel coping strategies and highlighted the contextual (organizational and personal) factors that influence the selection of coping strategies.

Conclusions

Our findings help in explaining the reasons and motives for up-taking specific coping strategies in the software industry. Based on our findings, employees invest considerable effort into coping with technostress, but do not receive enough support for their coping efforts. We offer insightful suggestions for support mechanisms that could be used by software organizations to enhance employees’ coping efforts and well-being.

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研究目的本研究旨在了解软件行业员工如何应对技术压力，以及他们的雇主如何为这些应对努力提供最佳支持。方法我们采用了定性方法中的关键事件技术，并通过问卷调查收集数据。我们总共收集并分析了 715 个来自该行业员工的应对关键技术压力事件的真实案例。此外，我们还发现了新的应对策略，并强调了影响应对策略选择的背景（组织和个人）因素。结论我们的研究结果有助于解释软件行业员工采取特定应对策略的原因和动机。根据我们的研究结果，员工为应对技术压力投入了大量精力，但他们的应对努力却没有得到足够的支持。我们就软件企业可用于提高员工应对压力的努力和幸福感的支持机制提出了有见地的建议。

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来源期刊

Journal of Systems and Software 工程技术-计算机：理论方法

CiteScore

8.60

自引率

5.70%

发文量

193

审稿时长

16 weeks

期刊介绍： The Journal of Systems and Software publishes papers covering all aspects of software engineering and related hardware-software-systems issues. All articles should include a validation of the idea presented, e.g. through case studies, experiments, or systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: •Methods and tools for, and empirical studies on, software requirements, design, architecture, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution •Agile, model-driven, service-oriented, open source and global software development •Approaches for mobile, multiprocessing, real-time, distributed, cloud-based, dependable and virtualized systems •Human factors and management concerns of software development •Data management and big data issues of software systems •Metrics and evaluation, data mining of software development resources •Business and economic aspects of software development processes The journal welcomes state-of-the-art surveys and reports of practical experience for all of these topics.