Show Me the Meaning of Working Lonely: Conceptualising the Interrelation between Individual and Collaborative Work

Knowledge workers are increasingly working in multi-team contexts to solve complex business problems. While collaborative work is an indispensable mode of work in multi-team knowledge work, the complementary mode of individual work, i.e. working uninterrupted in solitude, is often overlooked. We aim to better understand individual work and its role within multi-team contexts. Based on a literature review of the office design and telework debates, we provide a detailed account of individual work. Taking this vantage point and putting the task structure centre stage, we conceptualise the interrelation between individual and collaborative work. Specifically, we develop the work types maturation, execution, and meta work to exemplify the bipartite interrelation by depicting their task-bound interplay and time-bound tension. Thereby, we offer a different perspective on ‘cooperative work’ and equip practitioners with a vocabulary to discern the role of and articulate the needed amount for individual work

Selvledelse som mulighet i kunnskapsorganisasjoner: Trengs andre selvledelsesstrategier?

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How much Collaboration? Balancing the Needs for Collaborative and Uninterrupted Work

The proliferation of collaboration platforms in organisations has benefits for knowledge workers in terms of access to knowledge and social resources. However, negative effects, specifically collaborative overload, have only recently been acknowledged and are still rarely considered by companies. Collaborative overload is a multi-faceted construct, which covers downsides, unintended or side-effects of collaboration platforms and their organisational use. To introduce and explore what we believe is an important phenomenon, we conducted a narrative literature review to contextualise collaborative overload and to provide a structured account of underlying root causes. Based on this, we propose an agenda for future research and derive an initial research framework to clarify and delineate collaborative overload. With this twofold contribution, we aim to provide a frame of reference for the discourse about this important syndrome of modern workplace

Ledelse av mennesker i det nye arbeidslivet

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The Academic Use of WhatsApp and Technostress: Investigating the Experience of Fatigue and Coping Behaviours among University Students

The use of mobile instant messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook messengers, has grown remarkably in recent years. WhatsApp is one of the most adopted mobile messaging apps, with two billion users worldwide. Due to its popularity among students, WhatsApp is being increasingly adopted for learning purposes in higher education. WhatsApp can provide students with various benefits that facilitate online learning and knowledge exchanges. However, despite these benefits, using WhatsApp can also have negative effects for students and their well-being. Research has demonstrated that the excessive use and heavy reliance on information and communication technology (ICT) can lead to technostress, a phenomenon that refers to the stress experienced by individuals due to the use of ICT. Thus, although WhatsApp offers students an effortless and fast means for communication and information sharing, the use of WhatsApp for academic and non-academic-related purposes can create fatigue for students. Research indicates that university students are vulnerable to different sources of stress including academic stressors. With the increased use of mobile technology for learning, students could face an additional source of academic stress caused by the educational use of technology. While there has been a growing interest in studying the educational benefits of using mobile instant messaging, there is still a lack of understanding around its negative effects on students and their academic performance. Addressing this issue becomes important given the consequences of technostress on individuals. The current study, therefore, aims to shed light on the negative aspects of the educational use of WhatsApp. Using the transactional model of stress and coping, the study seeks to explore factors that cause fatigue among university students when using WhatsApp for learning purposes and investigate students’ coping behaviours to reduce fatigue. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted to identify the main reasons for the experience of fatigue and to understand coping behaviours. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 21 students. The findings of the interviews were used to guide the development of the conceptual research model. In the second phase, a cross-sectional survey approach was used to examine the proposed research model. The data were collected via online questionnaires from 1,188 students between March and April 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The participants in both phases were undergraduate students at a public university in Saudi Arabia. The findings suggest that a consequence of using WhatsApp for learning purposes is that students suffer from fatigue, which leads to the perception of decreased performance. The reasons for the experience of fatigue were information overload, communication overload, distraction, and invasion of privacy. Students engaged in two main coping strategies in order to deal with stressors and fatigue: disturbance handling, and self-preservation strategies. The findings also revealed that during the shift to remote learning, students faced technostress mainly because of the increased adoption of ICT for teaching and learning, a high level of technology dependence, increased communication and an increase of academic work, particularly group-based work which required the use of WhatsApp and other ICT. Overall, this study extends existing technostress and coping research by examining technology-related stressors and coping behaviours in the context of the educational use of WhatsApp. The findings of the current study provide insights and guidelines for decision-makers, educators and institutions in higher education with regard to the use of mobile instant messaging in education. Understanding fatigue associated with academic use and coping strategies to deal with fatigue can help students to reduce techno-stressors, thus enhancing the effectiveness of mobile learning via WhatsApp

Ledelse av mennesker i det nye arbeidslivet

"This book is the first in a series of publications from the Department of Leadership and Organization at Høyskolen Kristiania. Through 12 chapters, we highlight leadership-related issues concerning, among other things, digitalization, employee empowerment, consulting, behavioral biology, mentoring programs, self-leadership, corporate health, trust, and workplace inclusion. The chapters include studies within the business arena, the public sector, sports and the media, touching on one or more key dimensions of the research field: • Good leadership takes into account that people are more than processes. • Good leadership rides on the realization that our scope of action is crucial to how we manage our work. • Good leadership reflects understanding the importance of the context in which people and organizations find themselves • Good leadership means being aware of the relationship between change and continuity On the one hand, the chapters explore themes, cases and concepts that bring the field of research forward, especially in the Norwegian context, with a diversity of theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies. On the other hand, these same chapters challenge a number of assumptions, language choices and claims within management research that can obscure the value of the subject matter for working life in general. As this is a scientific anthology, the chapters are rich in research-based insights into circumstances and processes about which tomorrow's leaders will benefit from knowing. The book is therefore primarily aimed at researchers, managers and leadership developers, but it will also engage students and practitioners with an interest in leadership and management disciplines.

The Academic Use of WhatsApp and Technostress: Investigating the Experience of Fatigue and Coping Behaviours among University Students

The use of mobile instant messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook messengers, has grown remarkably in recent years. WhatsApp is one of the most adopted mobile messaging apps, with two billion users worldwide. Due to its popularity among students, WhatsApp is being increasingly adopted for learning purposes in higher education. WhatsApp can provide students with various benefits that facilitate online learning and knowledge exchanges. However, despite these benefits, using WhatsApp can also have negative effects for students and their well-being. Research has demonstrated that the excessive use and heavy reliance on information and communication technology (ICT) can lead to technostress, a phenomenon that refers to the stress experienced by individuals due to the use of ICT. Thus, although WhatsApp offers students an effortless and fast means for communication and information sharing, the use of WhatsApp for academic and non-academic-related purposes can create fatigue for students. Research indicates that university students are vulnerable to different sources of stress including academic stressors. With the increased use of mobile technology for learning, students could face an additional source of academic stress caused by the educational use of technology. While there has been a growing interest in studying the educational benefits of using mobile instant messaging, there is still a lack of understanding around its negative effects on students and their academic performance. Addressing this issue becomes important given the consequences of technostress on individuals. The current study, therefore, aims to shed light on the negative aspects of the educational use of WhatsApp. Using the transactional model of stress and coping, the study seeks to explore factors that cause fatigue among university students when using WhatsApp for learning purposes and investigate students’ coping behaviours to reduce fatigue. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted to identify the main reasons for the experience of fatigue and to understand coping behaviours. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 21 students. The findings of the interviews were used to guide the development of the conceptual research model. In the second phase, a cross-sectional survey approach was used to examine the proposed research model. The data were collected via online questionnaires from 1,188 students between March and April 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The participants in both phases were undergraduate students at a public university in Saudi Arabia. The findings suggest that a consequence of using WhatsApp for learning purposes is that students suffer from fatigue, which leads to the perception of decreased performance. The reasons for the experience of fatigue were information overload, communication overload, distraction, and invasion of privacy. Students engaged in two main coping strategies in order to deal with stressors and fatigue: disturbance handling, and self-preservation strategies. The findings also revealed that during the shift to remote learning, students faced technostress mainly because of the increased adoption of ICT for teaching and learning, a high level of technology dependence, increased communication and an increase of academic work, particularly group-based work which required the use of WhatsApp and other ICT. Overall, this study extends existing technostress and coping research by examining technology-related stressors and coping behaviours in the context of the educational use of WhatsApp. The findings of the current study provide insights and guidelines for decision-makers, educators and institutions in higher education with regard to the use of mobile instant messaging in education. Understanding fatigue associated with academic use and coping strategies to deal with fatigue can help students to reduce techno-stressors, thus enhancing the effectiveness of mobile learning via WhatsApp