Understanding the Strategies Used by Employees to Cope with Technostress in the Software Industry

Abstract

Working in the software industry exposes individual employees to the harmful effects of technostress because the work is heavily tied to information technology (IT) use. Because of the ever-increasing IT-related demands and high levels of stress experienced by software industry employees, it is important to understand how employees respond to and cope with these demands. We set to explore the coping strategies employed by individual employees in the industry by utilizing the coping taxonomy proposed by Skinner et al. [1]. We collected and analyzed the coping responses of 715 employees collected via a qualitative questionnaire. In total, we identified 29 individual coping strategies categorized into coping families per Skinner et al. [1]. Our findings help in moving towards a more comprehensive understanding of coping with technostress and in supporting the well-being of those working in the industry.