Examining gender differences in IT professionals' perceptions of job stress in response to technological change

• Authors: Mike Gallivan
• Venue: SIGMIS CPR '03 Proceedings of the 2003 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Freedom in Philadelphia--leveraging differences and diversity in the IT workforce
• Year: 2003

This paper examines antecedents and consequences of IT professionals' perceptions of job stress within the context of assimilating a technological innovation in the workplace. Drawing on recent research on issues of gender within the IT profession (Ahuja 2002; Trauth 2002), as well as on recent studies into gender differences in workplace stress (Gardiner & Tiggeman 1999), we develop a conceptual framework to understand the phenomenon. We develop hypotheses about how the experiences of men and women IT professionals will differ in certain ways as they adopt and adapt to using a technological innovation. Using a mixed-method study of two firms that were adopting a technological innovation, we examine employees' reactions along gender lines. We found that perceived compatibility of the changes being assimilated was inversely related to employees' perceptions of stress for both men and women. While women experienced higher levels of stress and being overworked (as we predicted), there were also some unanticipated findings. Women IT professionals appeared to be more sensitive to the total number of elements in the work environment that were changing (total amount of change) as a precursor to stress. In the one firm where managers provided more autonomy but less supervision in adapting to the new technology, women reported considerably higher levels of stress. Based on both our expected and unexpected findings, we provide insights for IT practitioners to anticipate and manage workplace stress, and we offer future directions for researchers. We argue that our recommendations will allow employers to better accommodate the needs of a diverse workforce.