E-mail as a source of stress and burnout symptoms: the mediating role of work-family conflict

• Autor(a) principal: Delgado, Francisco Pedro Faleiro Leal Carmo
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/17612
• topic: E-Mail as a source of stress; Work-family conflict; Segmentation preference; Burnout symptoms; Gestão de recursos humanos; Stress; Correio eletrónico; Conflito; Relação trabalho-família; Síndrome de burnout

Despite being one of the most used communication tools for work purposes, e-mail use may lead its users to experience unwanted symptoms for their mental health. This crosssectional study (N = 389) aims to shed light on how e-mail as a source of stress will impact both work-family conflict and burnout symptoms. We hypothesized that e-mail as a source of stress would be positively associated with both work-family conflict and burnout symptoms. Plus, we predicted work-family conflict to mediate the relationship between email as a source of stress and burnout symptoms. Our results pointed out to the existence of a partial mediation, in which work-family conflict explains the relationship between e-mail as a source of stress and burnout symptoms, thus supporting those three hypotheses. We have also hypothesized that segmentation preference would moderate the relationship between email as a source of stress and work-family conflict. However, the results we obtained do not support this hypothesis, after accounting for seniority. Our findings provide evidence to consider that e-mail as a source of stress is likely to cause a conflict between work and family lives among its users, which by its turn will lead to the experience of burnout symptoms. Further, we discuss the practical implications of these findings and suggest directions for future research.