Telepressure at work, relation between electronic mail use at work and leader-member exchanges: Roles of recognition and workload

Organizations rely heavily on asynchronous message-based technologies (e.g., e-mail) for the purposes of work-related communications. These information and communication technologies (ITC) are means of knowledge transfer and building social networks but can be sources of stress. Submitted to intensive electronic mailings, workers might feel varying levels of preoccupations with and urges for responding quickly to messages from many sources at work (supervisors, colleagues, customers). The workplace telepressure can lead to fast response times and thus faster decisions and other outcomes initially. However, research from the health and stress literature suggests that workplace telepressure interferes with use of the electronic mail, workload, recognition, LMX (Leader-Member eXchanges). The electronic mails (EM) at work are the communications tool the most used within the current companies. This exploratory study tries to understand the relations between the use of the electronic mails and the quality of leader-member exchanges, on one hand, and the telepressure, on the other hand by testing the mediating effects of the recognition and the workload. The results with 56 junior employees indicate that the perceived use of EM is positively bound to the quality of the leader-member exchanges and negatively to the telepressure. The effects of the use of the EM on leader-members exchanges are mediated by the recognition. The effects of the use of EM on telepressure are mediated by the workload. This exploratory study tries to explain these complex and ambiguous relations, while bringing new avenues of research. Implications for future research and workplace practices are discussed.