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The Balance Concept Revisited: Finding Balance to Reduce Stress in a Frantic World of IT

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The Impact of ICT on Quality of Working Life

Abstract

Information technology can bring benefits such as rapid access to information and remote connection with friends and colleagues; however, information technology can also produce problems and increase pressure and demands or invade privacy. This chapter describes different paradoxes of information technology and their impact on job stress. Using well-known interventions and principles of job stress, we describe interventions at the society, organization, and individual levels. The objective is to balance IT, design, implementation, and use to reduce or mitigate stress and improve individual, organizational, and societal outcomes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement (CQPI), University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Pascale Carayon

  2. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Pascale Carayon & Michael J. Smith

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  1. Pascale Carayon
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  2. Michael J. Smith
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Correspondence to Pascale Carayon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Christian Korunka

  2. Ctr. for Quality and Prod. Improvement, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Peter Hoonakker

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Carayon, P., Smith, M.J. (2014). The Balance Concept Revisited: Finding Balance to Reduce Stress in a Frantic World of IT. In: Korunka, C., Hoonakker, P. (eds) The Impact of ICT on Quality of Working Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8854-0_7

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