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This study aims to examine some of the benefits and drawbacks of communication visibility. Specifically, building on communication visibility theory, the authors study how and why message transparency and network translucence may increase knowledge reuse and perceived overload through behavioral responses of vicarious learning and technology-assisted supplemental work.

Drawing on survey data obtained from 1,127 employees of a global company operating in the industrial machinery sector, the authors used structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized model.

The results demonstrate that the two aspects of communication visibility yield somewhat differential benefits and drawbacks in terms of knowledge reuse and communication overload, through vicarious learning and supplemental work practices.

The results demonstrate the relationship between different aspects of communication visibility and knowledge reuse, specifically through vicarious learning. Furthermore, the findings highlight a potential drawback of visibility – communication overload – specifically through technology-assisted supplemental work. Overall, network translucence seems more beneficial compared to message transparency in terms of knowledge reuse and communication overload.

The study connects with recent work on communication visibility by distinguishing differential direct and indirect effects of message transparency and network translucence. It also extends this work by testing relationships between communication visibility and a potential drawback of visibility – communication overload – specifically through technology-assisted supplemental work.

This paper investigates the moderating role of multitasking computer self-efficacy on the relationship between social media affordances and social media overload as well as its moderation between social media overload and social media fatigue.

The authors hypothesize that social media affordances will have a positive impact on social media overload (i.e. information and communication overload). They also hypothesize that social media overload will affect social media fatigue. In addition, they hypothesize that multitasking computer self-efficacy will attenuate the effect of social media affordances on both information overload and communication overload. Similarly, they also hypothesize that multitasking computer self-efficacy will attenuate the effects of both information overload and communication overload on fatigue. The authors test this model by collecting two-wave data from 220 professionals using PLS techniques.

Social media affordances have significant impacts on information overload, but not on communication overload. In turn, information overload and communication overload significantly affect social media fatigue. Multitasking computer self-efficacy was found to attenuate the effect of social media affordances on both information overload and communication overload. Furthermore, the study results suggest that multitasking computer self-efficacy attenuates the effect of information overload and reinforces the effect of communication overload on social media fatigue.

Most prior literature focused on students rather than on professionals. There is a lack of research that investigates how the affordances of social media relate to social media overload and fatigue. Furthermore, research that investigates mitigating mechanisms of social media fatigue has been rare. This paper fills these important research gaps.

During the digital media era with an explosion of messages, the prevalence of what is known as “message fatigue” has grown. However, there is a lack of understanding toward message fatigue in using instant messengers. Based on the stressor-strain-outcome framework, this study provides a theoretical model to explore possible predictors and consequences of instant messaging fatigue.

The hypothesized model includes communication overload, social overload, instant messaging fatigue, technology and behavioral intention to use instant messaging. Three hundred and eleven responses are collected using an online survey. The authors conduct structural equation modeling to evaluate the hypothesized model and test the hypotheses.

This study reveals that (1) communication overload and social overload are positively associated with instant messaging fatigue and technostress; (2) higher levels of instant messaging fatigue and technostress are also related to a higher level of intention to discontinue usage; (3) technostress significantly mediates the relationship between instant messaging fatigue and intention to discontinue usage of instant messaging.

This study is limited to collect data from one university in the United States with a cross-sectional design. Future research should include other countries, different age groups and longitudinal methods to examine instant messaging fatigue.

This study extends existing findings on fatigue in using mobile communication by applying the stressor-strain-outcome framework to IM fatigue and improves the understanding of the potential negative aspects of instant messaging.

Social media overload and fatigue have become common phenomena that are negatively affecting people's well-being and productivity. It is, therefore, important to understand the causes of social media overload and fatigue. One of the reasons why many people engage with social media is to avoid boredom. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how boredom proneness relates to social media overload and fatigue.

Building on the stress–strain–outcome framework, this paper tests a model hypothesizing the relationships between a social media user's boredom proneness, information and communication overload, and social media fatigue. The study tests the model by collecting data from 286 social media users.

The results suggest a strong association between boredom proneness and both information and communication overload, which, in turn, are strongly associated with social media fatigue. In addition, social media usage was found to amplify the effects of information overload on social media fatigue, but, unexpectedly, attenuates the effects of communication overload.

Prior research has largely overlooked the connection between boredom and problematic social media use. The present study addresses this important gap by developing and testing a research model relating boredom proneness to social media overload and fatigue.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of social network sites (SNS) overload on individual job performance and discontinuous usage intention.

Based on the Stressor-Strain-Outcome (SSO) framework, a research model was proposed and tested empirically. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was applied to data collected online through a questionnaire.

Findings highlighted that social overload is related positively to information overload and communication overload. Information overload affected only the perception of work overload, while communication overload was a significant stressor affecting work overload and dissatisfaction towards SNS. Although results revealed a positive relationship between these two strains, only dissatisfaction influenced job performance and discontinuous usage intention.

As much as SNS are a useful tool in the workplace, they can have significant drawbacks. Prior studies have investigated this dark side. However, they scantily explored the effects of SNS overload on both job performance and discontinuous usage intention. Moreover, the relationships between types of overload are understudied. This paper proposes an enrichment of the literature by validating a model of the relationships between information overload, communication overload and social overload, job performance and discontinuous usage intention. It extends prior research on SNS stressors and points out the communication overload as the main SNS stressor affecting strains in the workplace.

This study is based on the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model to examine how job demands and technology overload affect work stress for workers using video conferencing apps (VCAs) in organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the moderating effect of technology self-efficacy was tested in the model on the relationship between technology overload and work stress.

An online survey was conducted to investigate workers on PTT forums in Taiwan. A sample was obtained of 253 workers, and structural equation modeling was conducted using AMOS to test the hypotheses.

Job demands positively affect work stress through information overload, communication overload and system feature overload. Moreover, high technology self-efficacy may weaken the relationship between technology overload and work stress.

The study may have sample bias because our sample was obtained from an online survey on social networking sites. Regarding the theoretical implications, this study demonstrated that technology overload, as an internal organism, is a critical mediator influencing the relationship between job demands (stimulus) and work stress (response). Thus, this study extended the applicability of the SOR model in the context of working with VCAs in organizations.

Company managers need to effectively control the information amount, communication interruptions and system features of social media at optimum levels for workers. Moreover, companies should recruit workers with high technology self-efficacy or provide technology training and technology-related consulting to those with low technology self-efficacy.

The extant work stress knowledge is extended to workers using VCAs in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of excessive social media use on individual job performance and its exact mechanism. An extended stressor–strain–outcome research model is proposed to explain how excessive social media use at work influences individual job performance.

The research model was empirically tested with an online survey study of 230 working professionals who use social media in organizations.

The results revealed that excessive social media use was a determinant of three types of social media overload (i.e. information, communication and social overload). Information and communication overload were significant stressors that influence social media exhaustion, while social overload was not a significant predictor of exhaustion. Furthermore, social media exhaustion significantly reduces individual job performance.

Theory-driven investigation of the effects of excessive social media use on individual job performance is still relatively scarce, underscoring the need for theoretically-based research of excessive social media use at work. This paper enriches social media research by presenting an extended stressor–strain–outcome model to explore the exact mechanism of excessive use of social media at work, and identifying three components of social media-related overload, including information, communication and social overload. It is an initial attempt to systematically validate the casual relationships among excessive usage experience, overload, exhaustion and individual job performance based on the transactional theory of stress and coping.

This study aims to provide insight on the meaning of communication overload as experienced by modern academic librarians. Communication is the essence of reference librarianship, and a practically endless array of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools (ICTs) are available to facilitate communication.

This study relied on a phenomenological methodology, which included nine in‐depth interviews with academic librarians. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using RQDA, a qualitative analysis software package that facilitates coding, category building, and project management.

Seven themes about librarianship emerged from this research: attending to communication abundance, librarians of two types, instruction not reference, twenty‐first century librarianship, user needs, trusted methods: filter not retrieve, and self‐impact. The shared meaning of communication overload among these librarians is that it is a problem when it detracts from or hinders their ability to assist their users.

Further research should contribute to an understanding of communication as a problem when it interferes with serving the librarians' users, or to an understanding of interpersonal communication within the librarians' organizational structures and in their broader professional networks.

Research in popular psychology has focused on the negative impacts on productivity and concentration of living in an always‐plugged‐in environment. This research confirms that librarians should have time to work away from digital distractions to maintain job satisfaction.

Important work by Radford and Dervin has focused on communication with users. This study focuses on the impact of ICTs on librarians' work and personal lives.

The purpose of this study is to examine how technology overload (system feature, information, and communication overload) influences salespeople’s role stress (role conflict and role ambiguity), effort to use technology and performance. This research examines whether these relationships are linear or quadratic. It also examines the moderating effect of salespeople’s technology self-efficacy.

Salespeople at a national company providing services to small and medium companies were surveyed via an online instrument to measure key constructs and control variables. Over 200 usable responses resulted; structural equation model was used to analyze the data.

Results show that dimensions of technology overload had linear and/or quadratic relationships with role stress, effort to use technology and performance. Salesperson’s technology self-efficacy moderated the relationship between technology overload, effort to use the technology and performance.

The benefits from new technology are not always linear. Managers should regulate the timing of technology improvements, as well as the availability of information, communication and system features, to reduce role stress and enhance efforts to use technologies.

Drawing on the job demand and resource model, this research demonstrates that technology used as a job resource will aid the salesperson and company; however, when technology overload exists, it becomes a job demand with the potential to enhance role stress and decrease salesperson performance.

The overload effects associated with the use of mobile information and communication technologies (MICTs) in the workplace have become increasingly prevalent. The purpose of this paper is to examine the overload effects of using MICTs at work on employees’ job satisfaction, and explore the corresponding coping strategies.

The study is grounded on the cognitive load theory and the coping model of user adaptation. The overload antecedents and coping strategies are integrated into one model. Theoretical hypotheses are tested with survey data collected from a sample of 178 employees at work in China.

The results indicate that information overload significantly reduces job satisfaction, while the influence of interruption overload on job satisfaction is not significant. Two coping strategies (information processing timeliness and job control assistant support) can significantly improve job satisfaction. Information processing timeliness significantly moderates the relationships between two types of overload effects and job satisfaction. Job control assistant support also significantly moderates the relationship between interruption overload and job satisfaction.

This study suggests that information overload and interruption overload could constitute an important index to indicate employees’ overload level when using MICTs at work. The two coping strategies provide managers with effective ways to improve employees’ job satisfaction. By taking advantage of the moderation effects of coping strategies, managers could lower employees’ evaluation of overload to an appropriate level.

This study provides a comprehensive model to examine how the overload resulting from using MICTs in the workplace affects employees’ work status, and how to cope with it. Two types of overload are conceptualized and corresponding coping strategies are identified. The measurements of principal constructs are developed and empirically validated. The results provide theoretical and practical insights on human resource management and human–computer interaction.