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The purpose of this study is to investigate the barriers that prevent workers in the software industry from experiencing flow in their work.

This study was conducted by using a qualitative critical incident technique-inspired questionnaire.

The findings suggest that workers in the software industry perceive that the most obvious obstacles to experiencing flow are related to work not presenting enough cognitive challenges and situational barriers related to the characteristics of the job (e.g. workdays having too many interruptions and distractions, timetables often being considered too tight for creative exploration and problem solving and having negative user experiences with development tools).

The findings provide insights into flow barriers, specifically barriers that prevent workers in the software industry from experiencing flow.

The purpose of the paper is to examine how media synchronicity facilitates the emergence of social exchange (i.e. trust and reciprocity) in organizations’ information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated interactions. A model of media synchronicity in organizational social exchange (MSiOSE) is proposed.

The paper has a design and review approach. The theoretical analysis is based on social exchange theory (SET) and media synchronicity theory (MST).

The authors propose that, in general, social exchange benefits from both asynchronous and synchronous communication processes. However, media synchronicity has different boundary conditions (i.e. pros and cons) in relation to the emergence of social exchange, determined in accordance with the mutually interacting patterns of trust and reciprocity predicted by SET. The authors provide testable theoretical propositions to support the analysis.

Social exchange is a critical business factor for organizations due to its well-known positive outcomes, such as the strengthening of social ties. The need for successful social exchange in remote work conditions is particularly emphasized. However, with regard to the communication and behavioral patterns that lead to social exchange via ICT, the theoretical understanding is limited. The study reveals previously unmapped heuristics between social exchange and physical media capabilities. Thus, the study's propositions can be used to study and analyze social exchange in the ever-changing media landscape. As a practical contribution, the study helps organizations to improve their communication strategies and use of ICT.

Excessive use of work-related information technology (IT) devices can lead to major performance and well-being concerns for organizations. Extant research has provided evidence of the incidence of such problematic IT use in organizations. We extend the understanding of problematic IT use by examining its individual (proximal) and organizational (distal) antecedents.

Drawing from the self-worth theory and the concept of fear of being left behind, we address proximal antecedents that lead to problematic IT use. Drawing from the concept of autonomy paradox, we address distal antecedents of problematic IT use through a positive association with the two proximal antecedents. We report the results of a field study involving 846 individuals who use IT for work. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data.

The results indicate that the proximal antecedents (IT insecurity and fear of missing out) are positively associated with problematic IT use. The distal antecedents (IT use autonomy and involvement facilitation) are positively associated with the proximal antecedents except for the relationship between IT use autonomy and IT insecurity, which was found statistically non-significant. Furthermore, fear of missing out fully mediates the effect of IT use autonomy on problematic IT use, whereas IT insecurity and fear of missing out fully mediate the effects of involvement facilitation on problematic IT use.

The paper theoretically extends the understanding of problematic IT use and identifies novel its proximal and distal antecedents.

Social media platforms are increasingly used at work to facilitate work-related activities and can either challenge or make people feel more productive at jobs. This study drew from technostress and employee well-being literature and analyzed longitudinal effects of professional social media (PSM) invasion, work engagement and work exhaustion on PSM-enabled productivity.

Nationally representative five-wave survey data of Finnish employees were analyzed with hybrid multilevel linear regression analysis. Outcome measure was PSM-enabled productivity and the predictors included PSM invasion, work exhaustion and work engagement. Age, gender, education, occupational sector, managerial position, remote work and personality traits were used as control variables.

PSM invasion and work engagement had both within-person and between-person effects on PSM-enabled productivity. Higher educated and individuals with open personality reported higher PSM-enabled productivity. No association between work exhaustion and PSM-enabled productivity was found.

The findings are central considering the increasing use of social media and other technologies for work purposes. The authors challenge the dominant view in the literature that has often seen PSM invasion as a negative factor. Instead, PSM invasion's positive association with PSM-enabled productivity and the association of work engagement and PSM-enabled productivity should be recognized in work life.

The purpose of this paper is to fill a significant research gap in academic literature pertaining to open innovation (OI). To do so, this paper empirically tests the impact of organizational culture, employees’ knowledge, attitudes and rewards as antecedents and mediators of OI adoption in organizations, facilitating a more thorough understanding by using an empirical multi-level approach.

This paper analyzes the results of the “Identification of Industrial Needs for Open Innovation Education in Europe” survey through a quantitative analysis using logistic regression models. This survey includes 528 employees working in 28 different industrial sectors in 37 countries, most of which are in Europe.

The results suggest a positive impact of organizational characteristics on the adoption of OI (i.e. including the adoption of outside-in and inside-out OI activities in participating organizations), showing that the openness of an organization’s culture increases its likelihood of adopting an OI paradigm. More importantly, the results highlight the positive mediating effect of employees’ knowledge and rewards on this relationship.

The data set that was the basis of this paper was generated in European countries, the results of the analysis are limited and appropriate for this region and may vary when applied to other regions of the world.

The proposed multi-level approach offers new insight into organizational knowledge. It enables the improvement of OI and knowledge management practices in organizations by assisting practitioners and academics in recognizing the relationship between organizational culture; employees’ knowledge, attitudes and rewards; and the adoption of the OI paradigm.

This paper offers a possible explanation on why open-border cultures are more likely to have a successful OI adoption, by relating it to factors that advance in the presence of an open-border culture, such as active participation of OI relative departments in knowledge sourcing and knowledge exchange, and rewarding employees for OI activities.

This paper presents a new framework which links organizational culture to OI, moving on from merely examining culture in terms of its positive or negative impact on OI adoption. It contributes to research on the OI paradigm and knowledge management by highlighting the significance of antecedents and mediators from a multi-level perspective using multiple units of analysis. Most previous studies focus on a single unit of analysis.

This research aims to explore the dark side of mobile applications by investigating the role of apps' technicality and app security in the mechanism of user satisfaction, app intention and customers' continuance tendency to make in-app purchases.

Drawing on attitude-behavior-context (ABC) theory, the study proposed a conceptual framework and examined the framework using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach based on data collected from app users from New Zealand.

The results reveal the correlation between user satisfaction and in-app purchase with a mediator of app continuance intention (ACI). In particular, the results show that app technicality (AT) has a positive correlation with user satisfaction as an antecedent. App security and hedonic value are positively correlated with user satisfaction.

The research has three critical research implications. First, this research advances the understanding of the dark side of mobile apps by showing how app security influences customers' in-app purchases. Secondly, this study reveals and offers empirical evidence for the mechanism between app security and user satisfaction. Finally, the study provides empirical evidence of AT as a distal antecedent for in-app purchases.

The ongoing dispute as to whether using technology extensively at work may cause harm continues to gain momentum. Thus, the need for more research on the harmful effect of using technology at work and on the indirect effects on work performance is needed. The call for additional moderators in technostress research is still ongoing. The research contributes to the abovementioned gaps in the literature by analyzing a model with two moderators.

The sample population was chosen randomly from the lists provided by civil-servant unions and the chamber of commerce subsidiaries in the northwest region of Turkey. The employees received letters that explained the purpose of the study; the questionnaires sent to them. Out of 500 forms, 328 were returned. PLS-SEM technique was selected for hypothesis testing.

The results revealed support for all the hypotheses, and proposed moderators can be used to mitigate the harms of technostress and burnout. The findings have implications for both theory and practice.

The limitation of this research is its sample characteristics. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the data set, it is difficult to claim causality. Therefore, readers should use caution when extending generalizations to a broader population. As for the theoretical implications, the interest in the challenges posed by various technologies in the workplace on human psychology and health over the long term is quite new. And there is still room for other mediating and moderating mechanism for the interplay between technostress and related outcomes.

One of the practical implications is that technology at work might have the potential to create stress, sometimes greater than its benefits. The effects that might be created by other sources of stress when combined with stress related to technology in the workplace should also be taken seriously. There are tools to reduce the harm caused by technostress that practitioners could make use of such as time-management interventions.

The dispute whether using technology extensively at work may cause harm rather than advantage continues to confuse people, and with time it is gaining momentum. Thus, there is necessity for more research on the harms of technology, and especially on the indirect effects on work performance. Second, the vast technostress literature seems to neglect to discern task performance from contextual one as the dependent variable. Lastly, the call for additional moderators in technostress research is still prevailing. The research contributes to the abovementioned gaps in the literature by analyzing a model with two moderators.

Drawing on the theories of social capital and leader–member exchange (LMX), the authors examined the moderated mediation relationships of psychological ownership and perceived supervisory support on social capital and organizational knowledge.

To test the proposed model, the authors collected data from 522 employees working in large corporations in South Korea.

The authors found that (a) social capital was positively related to organizational knowledge sharing, (b) perceived supervisor support mediated the linkage between social capital and knowledge sharing and (c) psychological ownership moderated the indirect effect of social capital on knowledge sharing through perceived supervisor support, such that the indirect effect was stronger for employees with low rather than high psychological ownership.

This study sheds new light on how the nature of relationship between the leader and followers as well as individual's psychological ownership play a crucial role in knowledge sharing.