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Design Blueprint for Stress-Sensitive Adaptive Enterprise Systems

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Abstract

Stress is a major problem in the human society, impairing the well-being, health, performance, and productivity of many people worldwide. Most notably, people increasingly experience stress during human-computer interactions because of the ubiquity of and permanent connection to information and communication technologies. This phenomenon is referred to as technostress. Enterprise systems, designed to improve the productivity of organizations, frequently contribute to this technostress and thereby counteract their objective. Based on theoretical foundations and input from exploratory interviews and focus group discussions, the paper presents a design blueprint for stress-sensitive adaptive enterprise systems (SSAESes). A major characteristic of SSAESes is that bio-signals (e.g., heart rate or skin conductance) are integrated as real-time stress measures, with the goal that systems automatically adapt to the users’ stress levels, thereby improving human-computer interactions. Various design interventions on the individual, technological, and organizational levels promise to directly affect stressors or moderate the impact of stressors on important negative effects (e.g., health or performance). However, designing and deploying SSAESes pose significant challenges with respect to technical feasibility, social and ethical acceptability, as well as adoption and use. Considering these challenges, the paper proposes a 4-stage step-by-step implementation approach. With this Research Note on technostress in organizations, the authors seek to stimulate the discussion about a timely and important phenomenon, particularly from a design science research perspective.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Newcastle, University Drive, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia

    Marc T. P. Adam

  2. University of Augsburg, 86135, Augsburg, Germany

    Henner Gimpel

  3. Project Group Business & Information Systems Engineering, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, Sankt Augustin, Germany

    Henner Gimpel

  4. Institute of Information Systems and Marketing (IISM) and Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Alexander Maedche

  5. University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, 4400, Steyr, Austria

    René Riedl

  6. University of Linz, Linz, Austria

    René Riedl

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  1. Marc T. P. Adam
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  2. Henner Gimpel
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Correspondence to Marc T. P. Adam.

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Accepted after three revisions by Prof. Dr. Karagiannis.

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Adam, M.T.P., Gimpel, H., Maedche, A. et al. Design Blueprint for Stress-Sensitive Adaptive Enterprise Systems. Bus Inf Syst Eng 59, 277–291 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-016-0451-3

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