Thesis-2013-Marulanda-Carter.pdf (3.58 MB)
Email stress and its management in public sector organisations
thesis
posted on 2014-02-28, 11:02 authored by Laura Marulanda-CarterEmail stress: what are its causes? how is it measured? can it be solved? The
literature review revealed that, despite the term being well used and
recognised, discussions surrounding the root cause of email stress had
reached little consensus and the concept was not well understood. By its
very nature, email stress theory had fallen victim to the academic debate
between psychological vs. physiological interpretations of stress which, as a
result of either choice, limited more progressive research. Likewise an array
of email management strategies had been identified however, whilst some
generated quick successes, they appeared to suffer longevity issues and
were not maintained a few months after implementation in the workplace.
The purpose of this research was to determine whether email communication
causes employees psychological and physiological stress and investigate the
impact of email management strategies in the workplace.
A pragmatic philosophy placed the research problem as central and valued
the differences between paradigms to promote a mixed-method approach to
research. The decision to pair both case studies and action research methods
ensured a framework for presenting results and an actionable solution was
achieved. In direct response to the research aims an original email stress
measuring methodology was devised that combined various data collection
tools to measure and investigate email stress. This research design was
applied and evaluated ‘email free time’ and email filing at the ''''''''''''
'''''''''''''''''''''''''. Results of the study showed an increased stress response to
occur during email use, i.e. caused employees’ increased blood pressure,
heart rate, cortisol and perceived stress, and a number of adverse effects
such as managing staff via email, social detachment, blame and cover-yourback
culture were identified. Findings revealed ‘email free time’ was not a
desirable strategy to manage email stress and related stressors, whereas
email filing was found more beneficial to workers well-being. Consolidation of
the data gathered from the literature review and research findings were used
to develop an initial conceptualisation of email stress in the form of two
models, i.e. explanatory and action. A focus group was conducted to validate
the proposed models and a further investigation at the '''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''' was
carried out to critique the use of an email training intervention. The results
showed some improvements to employees’ behaviour after the training, e.g.
improved writing style, email checked on fewer occasions each day and
fewer sufferers of email addiction. The initial models devised, alongside the
latter findings, were synthesised to create a single integrative
multidimensional model of email stress and management strategies. The
model made an original contribution to knowledge in terms of theory, i.e. to
conceptualise email stress, and practice, i.e. to offer practical solutions to the
email worker.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Information Science
Publisher
© Laura Marulanda-CarterPublication date
2013Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University. Please note that the file available on open access has been amended to provide anonymity for the organisations involved in the research.Language
- en