Abstract
Employees may experience technostress and job tension due to reasons such as inability to adapt to technological changes and developments, being constantly intertwined with technological tools and equipment, excessive workload, manager's attitude, communication problems between employees, or conflicts. This situation may adversely affect the service innovation behavior, which means change, development, and differentiation in products and services. Therefore, it may be beneficial for workplace management to implement flexible working arrangements in order to get more efficiency from its employees and to reduce technostress and work tension that negatively affect service innovation behavior. In this study, first of all, the concepts of technostress, job tension, service innovation behavior, and flexible working arrangements will be defined, and the characteristics of these concepts will be given in detail. Then, the theoretical background of the relations between these concepts will be explained, and suggestions will be made for future research.
TopIntroduction
With the rapid development of technology, it is observed that there are changes in professional life. In order to adapt to this change, organizations monitor their competitors, follow technology closely and renew themselves technologically. By this way, organizations can respond to demands more quickly and provide quality service. However, in case of failure to adapt to technological changes, employees may have difficulties and experience technostress. In addition, employees may be exposed to stress, especially due to workload. In the face of these situations, employees cannot be effective, cannot perform the performance expected from them and cannot show service innovation behavior. Because providing a good service can only be possible with employees who have low technostress and job tension, are open to development and are highly motivated. At this point, it may be beneficial to provide flexible working conditions for employees.
Organizations should exhibit innovative behaviors in the sector they are in, to provide efficiency, productivity, innovative policies, profitability and to compete with competitors. Because new goods and services must be offered to people in order to gain competitive advantage, which can be possible with innovative behaviors (Cummings and Oldham, 1997; Auernhammer et al., 2003). Innovative behavior, while creating an organization's share in national and international markets, both provides new goods and services to the market and helps to overcome barriers in getting into the market (Montes et al., 2005). In addition to organizations, employees' innovative behaviors will help them to stay away from individual and organizational issues and focus on their work (Kim and Shin, 2015). According to Carmeli (2006), it is possible for the employee to be more beneficial to the organization he is in, to find new ideas and solutions to problems, to carry out studies that improve himself, with innovative behaviors, and this can be achieved by providing the necessary environment and opportunities to the employee (Chen et al., 2010). Therefore, it can be said that innovative behavior is a process that offers an idea, solution and analysis to solve problems such as stress, tension, low motivation, and it is extremely important to support and sustain this process with innovative ideas (Scott and Bruce, 1994). Such that, thanks to innovative behaviors, employees can become more motivated and adapt to the work process by constantly improving themselves, revealing their talents and skills. In this way, performance increases, stress and tension can be reduced (Dincer and Orhan, 2012).
Moreover, it is possible to say that it is important for employees and managers to take innovation as a mission, to work and behave in this direction, to carry out the process in a controlled manner and to reflect it on goods, services, technology, management, organization and administrative issues (Hung et al., 2010). Based on these explanations, it can be thought that there are relations between technostress, job tension, service innovation behavior and flexible working arrangements.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Flexibility: It is to adapt easily to changing conditions and situations.
Innovative Behavior: It is the behavior that contributes to the individual and the organization's self-development and easy adaptation to the rapid change.
Stress: It is the resistance of the organism against the deterioration of the psychological structure of the individual and the change of his behavior with the effect of some power and pressure.
Technostress: It is the situation where the individual has difficulty or inability while learning and using information and communication technologies.
Innovation: It refers to the use of new technology, products, methods, materials, and energy resources.
Flexible Working Arrangements: These are the applications for professional life that ensure the balance between the work and social life of the employee in terms of space and time, making the employee comfortable, peaceful, satisfying and more beneficial.
Service: It is the non-material practices that ensure the fulfillment of human needs.
Service Innovation: It is the innovations that an organization makes in processes to replace or improve its existing goods and services.
Job Tension: It is the reaction that causes the physical structure of the employee to be affected as well as the psychological structure of the employee due to some negative reasons in professional life and causes the individual to be unsatisfied and unproductive in his job.
Service Innovation Behavior: It is the behavior shown to provide diversity, innovation, improvement, and update in the services offered by the organization in order to better compete with competitors and increase its market share.
Tension: It is the reaction of the organism to the stimuli that occur at a certain moment, which disrupts the mental balance of the person.