Techno-overload and well-being of French small business owners: identifying the flipside of digital technologies
Résumé
Technostress is an important by-product of information and communication
technologies (ICT). The technostress literature suggests focusing on
specific dimensions of technostress, such as techno-overload, which
describes when ICT usage demands to work faster and longer. However,
only a few studies have dealt with the technostress of small business
owners, let alone techno-overload. This is surprising since work overload
in general has been identified as an important dimension of job stress for
small business owners, and technostress has been identified as an important
impediment for workers in general. The aim of the current study is to
investigate the effect of techno-overload on well-being outcomes (as
a composite measure consisting of physical well-being, mental well-
being, sleep quality, burnout, and loneliness) using three data sets of
French small business owners. Our results indicate a strong negative
correlation between techno-overload and our composite measure of well-
being for all three data sets. We interpret our findings for several different
disciplines: information systems, small business owners and entrepreneurship,
health and well-being, psychology and organization studies. Our
data also allow for the identification of contextual effects – the COVID-
19 pandemic – since one survey was conducted before, one at the start of,
and one during the pandemic.