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The potential applications of information and communication technologies in the workplace are wide-ranging and, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, have increasingly found their way into the field of electronic performance monitoring (EPM) of employees. This study aims to examine the influence of EPM on individual performance considering the aspects of privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress within an organization. Thus, important insights are generated for academia as well as business.

A theoretical framework was developed which conceptualizes perceived EPM as independent variable and individual performance as dependent variable. Moreover, the framework conceptualizes three mediator variables (privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress). Based on a large-scale survey (N = 1,119), nine hypotheses were tested that were derived from the developed framework.

The results indicate that perception of EPM significantly increases privacy invasion, reduces organizational trust, increases individual stress and ultimately reduces individual performance. Moreover, it was found that privacy invasion reduces organizational trust and that this lowered trust increases individual stress. Altogether, these findings suggest that the use of EPM by employers may be associated with significant negative consequences.

This research enriches the literature on digital transformation, as well as human–machine interaction, by adopting a multidimensional theoretical and empirical perspective regarding EPM in the workplace context, in which the influence of EPM perceptions on individual performance is examined under the influence of different aspects (privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress) not currently considered in this combination in the literature.

Prior research has extensively examined how bringing technology from work into the non-work life domain creates conflict, yet the reverse pathway has rarely been studied. The purpose of this study is to bridge this gap and examine how the non-work use of smartphones in the workplace affects work–life conflict.

Drawing from three literature streams: technostress, work–life conflict and role boundary theory, the authors theorise on how limiting employees' ability to integrate the personal life domain into work, by means of technology use policy, contributes to stress and work–life conflict. To test this model, the authors employ a natural experiment in a company that changed its policy from fully restricting to open smartphone access for non-work purposes in the workplace. The insights gained from the experiment were explored further through qualitative interviews.

Work–life conflict declines when a ban on using smartphones for non-work purposes in the workplace is revoked. This study's results show that the relationship between smartphone use in the workplace and work–life conflict is mediated by sensed stress. Additionally, a post-hoc analysis reveals that work performance was unchanged when the smartphone ban was revoked.

First, this study advances the authors' understanding of how smartphone use policies in the workplace spill over to affect non-work life. Second, this work contributes to the technostress literature by revealing how, in specific situations, engagement with ICT can reduce distress and strain.

The goal of this work is to create a computational finite element model to perform thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) with the usage of a non-ideal load frequency, containing the effects of the material thermal properties.

Throughout this document, the methodology of the model is presented first, followed by the procedure and results. The last part is reserved to results, discussion and conclusions.

This work had the main goal to create a model to perform TSA with the usage of non-ideal loading frequencies, considering the materials’ thermal properties. Loading frequencies out of the ideal range were applied and the model showed capable of good results. The created model reproduced acceptably the TSA, with the desired conditions.

This work creates a model to perform TSA with the usage of non-ideal loading frequencies, considering the materials’ thermal properties.

This study aims to research the development trend, research status, research results and existing problems of the steel–concrete composite joint of railway long-span hybrid girder cable-stayed bridge.

Based on the investigation and analysis of the development history, structure form, structural parameters, stress characteristics, shear connector stress state, force transmission mechanism, and fatigue performance, aiming at the steel–concrete composite joint of railway long-span hybrid girder cable-stayed bridge, the development trend, research status, research results and existing problems are expounded.

The shear-compression composite joint has become the main form in practice, featuring shortened length and simplified structure. The length of composite joints between 1.5 and 3.0 m has no significant effect on the stress and force transmission laws of the main girder. The reasonable thickness of the bearing plate is 40–70 mm. The calculation theory and simplified calculation formula of the overall bearing capacity, the nonuniformity and distribution laws of the shear connector, the force transferring ratio of steel and concrete components, the fatigue failure mechanism and structural parameters effects are the focus of the research study.

This study puts forward some suggestions and prospects for the structural design and theoretical research of the steel–concrete composite joint of railway long-span hybrid girder cable-stayed bridge.

A career in entrepreneurship is stressful, especially during the start-up phase. Training programs for these nascent entrepreneurs are designed to improve entrepreneurial competencies and, more generally to generate learnings. Although learning outcomes can reduce stress, the conditions under which this can happen are not fully understood. The study looks particularly at the effect of learning, interaction with other participants and gender.

A six-month three-wave longitudinal study of 120 nascent entrepreneurs has been conducted to investigate the before-and-after effects of training on stress reduction. The training is specially designed to develop competencies, share knowledge about business creation and support the development of the project, not to reduce per se stress.

The training has no direct effect on stress levels. However, results indicate that interacting with others has a positive moderating effect on training as stress reduction, just as gender has. Specifically, women reduce their stress through training while men see theirs increasing. The authors conclude that breaking isolation through training is a relevant way to reduce entrepreneurial stress for nascent entrepreneurs.

Training programs offer different ways to deliver the learning content (online, in cohorts, in the continuous entrance, etc.). The findings of this study suggest ensuring that the participants will have opportunities to interact with others as it reduces the stress on nascent entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, the authors cannot demonstrate that this has a long-term effect as our timeframe is limited to six months.

This research investigates the stress-reduction effect of training, which is not a common outcome studied related to training. This highlights the importance of looking at other more distal outcomes as nascent entrepreneurs may seek other peripheral outcomes from training, like seeking a sense of belonging or wanting to break isolation.

This study explores how compassionate managerial leadership style can help to mitigate workplace stressors and alleviate stress experiences among employees — particularly in an extreme situation, such as the current global COVID-19 pandemic. The study's context is Nigeria's banking, manufacturing and healthcare sectors, which have a history of high employee stress levels.

Using a qualitative, interpretive methodology, the study adopts the thematic analysis process (TAP) to draw and analyse data from semi-structured telephone interviews with 10 banking, 11 manufacturing and 9 frontline healthcare workers in Nigeria.

It was found that a compassionate managerial leadership can drive a considerate response to employees' “fear of job (in)security”, “healthcare risk” and concerns about “work overload, underpayment and delayed payment”, which respondents considered to be some of the key causes of increased stress among employees during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The study is limited to exploring the relationship between compassionate managerial leadership and an organisation's ability to manage employee stress in the COVID-19 situation, using 30 samples from organisations operating in three Nigerian cities and sectors. Future studies may involve more Nigerian cities, sectors and samples. It may also possibly include quantitative combination to allow generalisation of findings.

In order to survive in extreme situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations are forced to take drastic and often managerialist-driven work measures which can trigger high stress levels, low productivity and absenteeism among employees. Hence, organisations would benefit from implementing compassion-driven policies that are more inclusive and responsive to the workplace stressors facing employees.

Employee stress has been widely explored in many areas, including definitions, stressors, strains, possible interventions and coping strategies. There remains, however, a dearth of scholarship on how management-leadership compassion can help to reduce employee stress levels in extreme conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic — particularly in emerging economies.

Service research offering a view of both the dark and bright sides of smart technology remains scarce. This paper embraces a critical perspective and examines the conflicting outcomes of smart services on the customer experience (CX), with a specific focus on chatbots.

This study uses empirical research methods to examine a single case study where an online retail service provider implemented a chatbot for customer service. Using discourse analysis, we analysed 7,167 conversations between customers and the chatbot over a two-year period.

The analysis identifies seven general themes related to the effects of the chatbot on CX: interaction quality, information gathering, procedure literacy, task achievement, digital trust, shopping stress and shopping journey. We illuminate both positive (i.e. having a pleasant interaction, providing information, knowing procedures, improving tasks, increasing trust, reducing stress and completing the journey) and negative outcomes (i.e. having an unpleasant interaction, increasing confusion, ignoring procedures, worsening tasks, reducing trust, increasing stress and abandoning the journey).

The paper develops a comprehensive framework to offer a clearer view of chatbots as smart services in customer care. It delves into the conflicting effects of chatbots on CX by examining them through relational, cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions.

Combining the goal-setting and job demands-resources (JD-R) theories, we examine how two project resources, collaborative project leadership and financial project resources, enhance high project performance in community-academic health partnerships.

With a sequential explanatory mixed-method research design, data were collected through a survey (N = 318) and semi-structured interviews (N = 21). A hypothesised three-path mediation model was tested using structural equation modelling with bootstrapping. Qualitative data were examined using thematic analysis.

Project workers’ hope, goal-commitment and -stress: (1) fully mediate the hypothesised relationship between highly collaborative project leadership and high project performance; and (2) partially mediate the relationship between financial project resources and high project performance. The qualitative data corroborate and deepen these findings, revealing the crucial role of hope as a cognitive-motivational facilitator in project workers’ ability to cope with challenges.

Project leaders should promote project workers’ goal commitment, reduce their goal stress and boost project performance by securing financial project resources or reinforcing workers’ hope, e.g. by fostering collaborative project leadership.

The findings contribute to the project management and JD-R literature by considering the joint effects of project workers’ hope and two commonly studied project resources (collaborative project leadership and financial project resources) on high project performance. Moreover, we demonstrate the importance of the goal-setting and JD-R theories for understanding complex health-promotion projects connecting academic to community work.