Support and Facilitating Conditions to Computer Workers Who Dislike Working with Computers

Introduction

Computers seem to be omnipresent in today’s society and the number of employees completing some, or all of their jobs on a computer continues to increase. However, not all individuals enjoy computer work as much as others. When employees who dislike computer work have to complete their jobs on a computer, they are likely to experience negative consequences (Compeau, Higgins, & Huff, 1999; Locke, 1976; Spector, 1997; Yi & Hwang, 2003). Two of these outcomes that we investigate in this study are job satisfaction, defined as a positive emotional state that results from how employees appraise their jobs and/or job experiences (Locke, 1976), and perceived technology work overload, defined as the extent to which perceptions of the technology related job performance required is excessive and feeling that computers have compounded the overall workload (Iverson, Deery, & Erwin, 1995). Not only are these outcomes important in and of themselves, but they have also been shown to be important predictors of other workplace consequences including turnover intentions, actual turnover, job performance, and health-related outcomes (e.g., Edmunds & Morris, 2000; Faragher, Cass, Cooper, 2005; Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000; Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton, 2001; Thatcher, Stepina, & Boyle, 2002) in a number of different samples including IT workers (e.g., Thatcher et al., 2002).

Although negative outcomes are likely to be associated with the dislike of computer work, there are factors in the workplace that may minimize or buffer (Ganster, Fusilier, & Mayes, 1986; Salanova, Peiro, & Schaufeli, 2002) these linkages. In particular, we examined how work-related support received from either the supervisor or an employee’s coworkers will impact job satisfaction and perceived technology work overload. Both of these relationships are of considerable importance to computer workers, thus making the investigation of help received from these sources all the more necessary (e.g., Ferratt, Short, & Agarwal, 1993). Further, based on the social support framework (e.g., House, 1981; Viswesvaran, Sanchez, & Fisher, 1999) and the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989), we expected that the dislike of computer work is related to job satisfaction and perceived technology work overload, and that receiving computer help from either the supervisor or coworkers will minimize these negative outcomes. Additionally, we hoped to determine whose (supervisor’s or coworkers’) support has a greater buffering impact. We explored these notions using a sample of 225 computer workers from a wide range of jobs, thus providing a more stringent test of these relationships across different workplaces and helping to establish the generalizability of our results.