The dark side of sales technologies: how technostress affects sales professionals

Abstract

PurposeThis article evaluates the effect of technostress due to implementation of sales technologies on sales professionals in terms of changes in job satisfaction and role stress and potential mitigation strategies including technostress inhibitors and job commitment.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilizes a survey data collection from sales professionals in B2B consultative roles selling to business customers from construction, industrial supply and business service firms, including items that explore before and after factors around a customer relationship management implementation.FindingsTechnostress results in a decrease in job satisfaction and an increase in role stress of sales professionals. Job commitment moderates the decrease in job satisfaction, i.e. the higher the job commitment the less significant the decrease in job satisfaction.Practical implicationsSales forces need to implement technostress inhibitors to help mitigate the effects of technostress in exacerbating other sales professional stressors. These inhibitors should be contextualized to the unique situation of the sales organization.Originality/valueThe study examines the dark side of sales technologies. Our research expands current understanding by considering new relations among technostress-creating conditions and two work-related outcomes that are salient to sales professionals, namely role stress and job satisfaction. Further, we investigate the change in these outcomes before and after the implementation of sales technologies rather than only considering them at one point of time, after the fact.

Overcoming the “Dark Side” of Technology—A Scoping Review on Preventing and Coping with Work-Related Technostress

“…Among the included studies, there was a large majority of quantitative cross-sectional studies ( n = 48) [ 6 , 9 , 10 , 13 , 21 , 22 , 24 , 46 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , 92 ] as can be seen in Table S6 in the Supplementary Materials . In total, 53 studies followed a quantitative methodological approach [ 6 , 9 , 10 , 13 ,…”

“…It becomes apparent that many studies did not provide (complete) information on the participants’ gender, while in seven studies [ 6 , 7 , 48 , 79 , 94 , 100 , 102 ], no demographic information was provided regarding gender. In the 52 studies reporting the age of participants, it ranged from 17 to 75 years, with a mean of 40.62 years [ 6 , 7 , 9 , 10 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 46 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 77 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , ...…”

“…Thus, most of the included samples were simply categorised as “employees using ICT at work” ( n = 30) [ 7 , 10 , 23 , 46 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 63 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 71 , 73 , 74 , 77 , 79 , 81 , 82 , 84 , 85 , 88 , 90 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 101 ]. Other larger groups were employees at educational and research institutions ( n = 6) [ 48 , 58 , 59 , 73 , 76 , 91 ], salespeople or sales professionals ( n = 6) [ 6 , 9 , 24 , 56 , 83 , 87 ], knowledge workers ( n = 5) [ 7 , 22 , 66 , 97 , 98 ], and public sector employees ( n = 3) [ 15 , 55 , 64 ]. The mean work experience among those studies reporting it ( n = 28) was 9.15 years […”

“…Other larger groups were employees at educational and research institutions ( n = 6) [ 48 , 58 , 59 , 73 , 76 , 91 ], salespeople or sales professionals ( n = 6) [ 6 , 9 , 24 , 56 , 83 , 87 ], knowledge workers ( n = 5) [ 7 , 22 , 66 , 97 , 98 ], and public sector employees ( n = 3) [ 15 , 55 , 64 ]. The mean work experience among those studies reporting it ( n = 28) was 9.15 years [ 6 , 9 , 13 , 21 , 24 , 54 , 56 , 57 , 59 , 60 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 71 , 72 , 75 , 80 , 83 , 84 , 86 , 87 , 89 , 91 , 93 , 95 , 97 , 103 ]. More study characteristics are provided in the Supplementary Materials in Table S6 .…”

Does Technostress Impact On University Students’ Academic Performance in the New Normal?

“…The widespread use of technology in universities has led to the emergence of this harmful diseases to its users. (Jena, 2015 Technostress have been extensively studied in the literature on the organizational perspective specially its impact on job outcomes (Suh & Lee, 2017;Pullins et al, 2020). Furthermore, studies in technostress have focused on various groups like library users (Sami & Pangannaiah, 2006) teachers or academia (Ozgur, 2020 According to Ortega-Maldonado and Salanova (2018) academic performance is one of the most relevant outcomes in the university setting.…”