Caught Unprepared: Consequences of Getting Full Online During a Pandemic Autori:

Abstract

Although the concept of remote working is not new, and it has been in use for a while, billions of people and workplaces were caught in surprise during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to full-scale lockdowns people got stuck with their family members. And in a very short time they were expected to set up home-offices and continue working. Balancing family relations with daily work schedule was hard for many. Drawing on a sample of instructors, this study investigates how people felt and dealt with it. Homogeneous purposive sampling technique was employed. The authors contacted with people from their network and asked them to fill in the online questionnaires. The people contacted also help to reach others in their network and consequently a total of 435 people participated. Most of the sample is comprised of university instructors (44.4%); followed by secondary school (22.8%), primary school (18.6%), and high school teachers (14.3%). We developed a theoretical model based on boundary theory and study the relationships among eWork-Life interferences with technostress and psychological well-being. The results supported our hypotheses and we found that timely IT assistance might decrease the felt technostress. Implications and further study suggestions are made accordingly.