Change fatigue, social support and working with the newest technologies: The crucial role of technology acceptance in employee well-being

Abstract

Workers have been subjected to technological developments for years. When technological innovation keeps changing the work field, employees are required to change along. The present study focused on change fatigue among employees and studied whether perceived organizational support contributed to higher technology acceptance. Furthermore, the aim of the study was to examine the relationship between technology acceptance and positive and negative psychological stress outcomes related to technology use, namely technostress and technology acceptance. Data were collected using an online survey from 270 managers of a Dutch supermarket chain. The participants were the users of new HR-administrative software, called MyHR. Two mediation and one moderation analyses were done to test the hypotheses. The results confirmed that change fatigue was negatively related to technology acceptance and that perceived organizational support functioned as a moderation variable, which reduced the negative effect change fatigue had on technology acceptance. Furthermore, technology acceptance was found to be positively related to technology engagement and negatively related to technostress. These results showed the importance of focussing on positive well-being outcomes as well as negative ones, which will hopefully lead to more scientific attention towards technology engagement. Lastly, technology acceptance was successfully operationalized as a mediator in the relation between change fatigue and employee well-being outcomes. The current research tried to incorporate the psychological stress theory to enrich the theory of technostress and technology acceptance and show the importance of interdisciplinary theoretical enrichment.