Technostressors and job stress: examining the role of personality traits

In the current scenario of globally distributed working, information and communications technologies (ICTs) are playing a key role in connecting the global workforce. Further, rapid technological advances have made it possible to get connected anytime anywhere, thereby delivering data and information in real time to support businesses, organizations and personal decisions. Though the ubiquity of ICTs is beneficial for organizations, it often promotes negative outcomes for the employees such as -- increased work overload, increased stress, pressures due to excessive technology dependence and demands for enhanced productivity. Although prior research has examined the influence of technostressors on job stress, insights into the influence of personality traits on the perceptions of technostressors, and their consequent impacts on job stress, is rather limited. Such insights would enable a deeper understanding on the effects of individual differences on salient job related outcome. In this research-in-progress, by leveraging the differences in personality traits offered by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) and grounding the research in Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (TMSC), we theorize the moderating influence of personality on the relationships between technostressors and job stress. Specifically, the study theorizes the mechanisms through which each of the specific personality traits of - openness-to-experience, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and extraversion, interacts with technostressors to have a different influence on job stress. We plan to test the theorized model in a field study based on a survey of senior organizational managers, who regularly use information and communication technologies (ICTs) for professional tasks. Though technostressors are generally associated with negative job outcomes, we expect that for individuals with certain personality traits, the negative effect of technostressors may be mitigated. The study will thus contribute to the technostress literature -- specifically by incorporating the salient role of individual differences into the nomological network linking technostressors to job stress. The study will also provide insights to managers for paying special attention to allocating specific job roles to employees with particular personality traits for maximizing job related outcomes.