Life is tough so you gotta be rough: How resilience impacts employees' attitude towards ICT use

A new era characterized by ubiquitous computing and continual information flows due information and communication technologies (ICT) has arrived in our work environment. Both practitioners and researchers are arguing about whether organizations should enforce ICT use or not. However, it is the individual employee who is confronted with ICT every day. The increase in ICT enables employees to work regardless of time and space, creating a new form of workplace flexibility. This techno-impact often results in an inner conflict among employees, with ICT perceived either as an instrument to improve effectiveness or as a potential risk causing overload. Using structure equation modeling on survey data from a recruitment company in Germany, this study examines the dichotomous perceptions of employees towards ICT use. Data suggests that individuals' resilience level has a major impact on their different ICT perceptions. Resilience helps to alleviate the negative effect of techno-overload perceptions and reinforces the positive effects of ICT use, such as perceived usefulness. Employees try to benefit from this new flexibility by using ICT also outside of regular working hours. The role of working after work is therefore often mentioned at the same time as ICT use and is found to be an important mediator within the proposed research model.