The purpose of this research in progress is to assess the degree of reported job stress among IS professionals World Wide and specially USA, and to determine which hypothesized factors are reported by a majority of employees as being major contributors to their stress. Analysis will then be carried out to investigate a significant relationship between reported degrees of experienced stress, perceived stress factors, and personal characteristics of the employee, the computing environment (technical and managerial) and the employing organization.
There is considerable reason to believe that the IS professional (applications programmer, data or systems analyst etc.) today is significantly more at risk of serious "burnout" than his counterpart of 20-25 years ago. In his 1984 effort, Techno stress, Craig Brod points out that "high performance (requirements) with high technology can exercise a dangerous influence on the human personality... anyone who is constantly working or playing with computers is at risk". Psychologist Mary Riley points out dysfunctional behaviors arising when "high touch has not kept up with high tech". Khosrowpour and Culpan have published a stress-related study applied to individuals working in computer-related fields. In it, they remark: "Information processing professionals see change in technology as a pre-requisite for their existence, yet the speed of this change can have profound psychological and physiological effects". In their survey with 231 responses, "a large majority agreed with the statements that change in computer technology creates pressure". The authors conclude that " the men and women who plan, design, and monitor these systems have experienced greater techno stress in their jobs and environments". Such techno stress is not at all likely to disappear in the foreseeable future.
Introduction
Globalization and regional economic imperatives have no doubt led to modern work
Environments increasingly characterized by ‘too much work’, ‘not enough work’ and ‘no work’ rather than optimal ‘healthy-productive’ work.............................
