Work Pressures

New Agendas in Communication

Dawna Ballard, Matthew McGlone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317383086
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Work Pressures fills the void of research on the nature of pressures on individuals in the workplace. It offers a broad view of how work pressures can compromise the performance and vitality of individuals and their organizations. The contributions to this volume not only confirm communication's centrality to the problems work pressures pose, but also open an interdisciplinary conversation about how to learn from and, ultimately, manage them. Specific topics covered include the proliferation of communication technologies, organizational discourse, work overload, and generational differences in the workplace.

PART I

1

Understanding Overload in a Contemporary World

Keri K. Stephens

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

It is the end of the semester, and students in a senior-level internship class are STRESSED OUT! Not only are they preparing to graduate, but they are finishing their internships, interviewing for jobs, and studying for final exams. While graduation is certainly a time in peoples’ lives when they expect to be overwhelmed, these feelings also occur during our daily lives as well. Many people often report feelings of having too much information, pressures to respond to others, and overwhelming to-do lists. When was the last time you sat through a class and by the time it was over you had received ten, twenty, or even fifty text messages? All these messages could have made you happy, but they could also add to your feelings of being overloaded. This chapter explores issues of overload and centers on a specific type of excessive “load” defined as “the extent to which, in a given period of time, an organization’s members perceive more quantity, complexity, and/or equivocality in the information than an individual desires, needs, or can handle in the process of communication” (Chung & Goldhaber, 1991, p. 8). By dissecting this common perception, you will learn how to consider different factors that can contribute to the feeling of being overloaded with information and communication. This knowledge can help you in college, graduate or professional school, and when you transition into the workplace.

Overload Research History

Overload seems to be a common perception now that our information society operates “under a more-faster-better philosophy of life” (Levy, 2009, p. 512). Not only do college students experience overload, but this phenomenon is highly relevant in the workplace today. Much of the past research on overload has been from the perspective of information overload found in the information sciences field (Edmunds & Morris, 2000; Eppler & Mengis, 2004; Hiltz & Turoff, 1985; Jones, Ravid, & Rafaeli, 2004) or organizational and decision-making research (O’Reilly, 1980; Speier, Valacich, & Vessey, 1999; Sutcliffe & Weick, 2008; Weick, 1970). In their comprehensive discussion of overload, Eppler and Mengis (2004) review a broad interdisciplinary literature that focuses on information overload and they find that when people are overloaded, they experience poorer decision-making and strenuous personal situations. Overload adversely affects individual performance and can lead to four types of outcomes: limited information search, arbitrary information analysis, suboptimal decisions, and strenuous personal situations (Eppler & Mengis, 2004). This means that people are more likely to collect less data and rush to finish a project instead of devoting the time needed to produce a quality product. In addition to individual performance degradation, Speier et al. (1999) found that when people are interrupted, they feel an increased sense of information overload which can result in decreased decision accuracy and increased decision time. Ultimately, if people are continuously overloaded at work, they report burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001), which often leads to job dissatisfaction and leaving a job.

Overload is a fundamental concept found in human communication because our field originated with information theory (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), and notions of load, communication channels, and noise were fundamental parts of that theory. Overload is also increasingly relevant for many subdisciplines of communication. Organizational communication, the study of workplace communication and how organizations are made up of communication processes and practices, has historically had the most pressing interests in this phenomenon—e.g., decision-making degradation—but the contemporary communication technology environment has expanded the relevance of overload. Now we see that interpersonal relationships and families are being impacted since people bring their mobile devices home and use them during family time or dinner (Mazmanian, Yates, & Orlikowski, 2006). We also find that overload is important in the study of health communication since people increasingly claim they are overloaded with health information (Kim, Lustria, Burke, & Kwon, 2007). Ultimately people’s frustration with being overloaded illustrates a highly communicative concern—one that shares some similarities with the concept of information overload, but also introduces new people-related, communicative issues that are highly relevant in a contemporary society. Let us examine some of the issues next.

Technology and Accessibility

The rise in mobile phones, more broadly described as personal communication technologies or PCTs (Campbell & Park, 2008), and the increase in communication accessibility have created new opportunities and expectations for interacting with others, a practice associated with higher overload (Rafaeli, 1988). Today’s young adults are likely to receive text messages, emails, phone calls, face-to-face conversations, and social media messages, all interspersed throughout their day. The knowledge that people can be reached immediately through a mix of technologies can create what has been called an electronic leash (Jarvenpaa & Lang, 2005) and a feeling of needing to be accessible anytime and anywhere (Jarvenpaa & Lang, 2005; Middleton, 2007). Consider the following example provided by a student we will call John:

“You see I have my iPhone with me all the time, and my friends know this about me. The problem is that when my friends text me, they don’t know if I am in class or busy, and they always expect an immediate response. If they don’t get one, they keep texting and calling me. I’ve tried turning off my phone, but I feel like I’m punished if I am not always available. I’d rather handle messages as I get them than be overwhelmed with hundreds of texts.”

This scenario is common with college students and young adults entering the workforce. The real paradox, identified by Jarvenpaa and Lang (2005), is that people enjoy and need their technologies, but they also depend on mobile devices. Jarvenpaa and Lang (2005) studied 222 urban mobile users in four countries and their independence/dependence paradox describes people’s reliance on communication technology and their struggle to be free of the constant connection to others. They call this the difficulty to “break the ‘always on’ habit” (p. 12) and they stress that mobile phone use appears to be habitual, meaning that people do not actively consider why and how they use these devices.

In a course taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Workplace Technologies, we assign students the task of going twenty-four hours with no access to communication technologies. This means no mobile phone, no computer, no social media, and no electronic music. It forces students to use pen and paper to take field notes about their experiences and all their communication occurs face-to-face. These students have to plan ahead and download class notes and electronic textbook resources prior to their deprivation experience. While very few students report joy from this experience, most of them learn two key things: they are living as always accessible people, and they are not using their time as wisely as they probably should. Most students also relate these two key realizations to the fundamental reasons they feel overloaded. While we will explore both of these observations in detail in this chapter, these realizations help us understand a core argument: people, both self and others, not information, are a frequent cause of overload perceptions.

Understanding Overload by Using Biology Metaphors

Past research has established that overload is important to study because it leads to serious personal and organizational problems (Eppler & Mengis, 2004; Farhoomand & Drury, 2002). Furthermore, many causes of overload have been identified and there are attempts to measure this phenomenon (e.g., Eppler & Mengis, 2004; Ballard & Seibold, 2006). Yet there is still a large gap to fill in this body of research because we have inadequately considered the role that other people play in the perception of overload. We need to understand that overload is best defined on a continuum of severity and that overload is in a constant state of flux because “both the creation and reduction of overload, as parallel processes, can occur at the same time” (Weick, 1970, p. 85). So people tend to end up in situations that cause them to feel overload, sometimes just an annoyance, but sometimes a debilitating experience. This is why overload is in a state of flux; people are constantly adjusting their practices to cope. People change both their physical practices and their beliefs concerning their perceived state of overload.

Equating Load to Biology

To better understand how overload functions, let’s take a trip to our entry-level biology classes that discussed cells and the human body. Even though we are social scientists studying people and work practices in this type of overload research, it is often helpful to borrow metaphors from fields that are studied by students of all majors and backgrounds. Thus biology and basic science courses provide these helpful examples.

Communication load functions much like cells in the human body because our goal is to maintain internal system health while living and interacting in a constantly changing environment. This maintenance goal of living cells is called homeostasis, a term also common in cybernetics and organizational systems (Katz & Kahn, 1966). A homeostatic system (a cell, an organization, or the process of communication load) maintains its functions by constantly adjusting to internal and external demands. While equilibrium is desired, there are times when homeostatic imbalance occurs and the system is compromised. In the human body, homeostatic imbalances can lead to diseases such as diabetes and dehydration; thus some of these imbalances can be corrected, yet some are permanent. In communication load, this imbalance is called overload or underload. Much like a living cell undergoing homeostatic imbalance, people under conditions of load imbalance also experience negative effects and they adjust themselves and their environment to return to a state of homeostasis. Homeostatic load varies between people because overload is a perception and people have different tolerance levels for how they interpret and respond to load imbalances.

Through communication processes, load is constituted and it involves constant negotiation of the human components of self and others along with technological considerations. In the process of communication, people are interacting with others (social) and using tools, often technology-based (material), to facilitate and interpret the load they experience in the communication process. For example, as people try to respond to text messages, they have decisions to consider such as their own time management strategies to only check text messages once an hour, the power that the sender of the text message has over them, and whether or not they will join groups that send copious group texts. When people adjust combinations of technological and social concerns to maintain homeostasis, overload is fleeting and the concept is more accurately depicted as communication load, instead of permanent overload.

Mixtures and Solutions of People and Technology

If we sit back and analyze our own overload situations, we can often identify the unique social and technology issues that lead us to feel overloaded. In these situations, we can think of the social and material components as a type of physical change. Some mixtures are like combinations of red gravel and white gravel, items that do not change form or take on new properties when they combine and they are clearly separable. Yet there are other times when we have no idea how we ended up overloaded, and the social and material components are irreversibly entangled much like a chemical change. In using the terms “physical change” and “chemical change,” I refer to a commonly understood distinction in the chemical sciences where components are combined and become a single entity, yet have varying properties that allow for separation or permanent chemical change.

One type of matter combination, helpful for understanding how overload occurs, is when two materials undergo a physical change such as salt dissolving in water. The new mixture looks different, but if we work hard enough, we can identify that salt and water constituted the saltwater mixture. Furthermore, the saltwater has different properties—e.g., freezing temperature—than the salt and water had individually. Let us apply this physical change metaphor to overload. We might own an iPhone (material component), and we might be a member of a very active student organization (social component). Separately, each of those components has unique properties. But after we decide to join a group text from this highly active organization, we find ourselves receiving over fifty texts an hour, and now we view both our phone and our organization as problems, not opportunities for communication.

Yet combinations of material and social issues in human communication are often not simple, because people, like cells and organizations, change their practices over time. Therefore, in addition to clearly separable mixtures, there are irreversible chemical changes—e.g., iron reacting with air to form rust. Once rust is formed, we cannot change it back to usable iron and we only know what created the rust if we are knowledgeable about that chemical reaction. This irreversible chemical change is similar to the argument for entanglement between social and material concerns because once we experience this type of overload, we can no longer tell the individual compounds used to create our situation.

Combinations of social and material components create changes in perceptions of communication load. For example, the literature on overload often reports that people define themselves as overloaded and they tend to place blame on material objects (as in their iPhone) or social objects (their student organization). By examining material and social components together, we can understand how our decision to join a group text, combined with our use of a mobile device, created a new practice that made us feel overloaded.

The Constitution of Communication Overload

Multiple Agencies

When deciding how to dissect our own overload perceptions, we need to think broadly about people and technologies. A communicative term often used to describe these types of components is an agent. Agency is defined in many ways, but we will borrow a definition that originated in structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), that defines agency as human action or the notion that humans actively construct their worlds. When we think about agents, scholars stress that there are often “a plenum of agencies” (Cooren, 2006)—meaning multiple agents—tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface: Work Pressures: New Agendas in Communication
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• Index