Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Interruptions cost companies millions of dollars per year (Spira & Feintuch, 2005), in lost time and errors. Not only are interruptions detrimental to the immediate productivity of the worker, but they have been suggested to be significant workplace stressors. This study aims to determine whether it is the objective experience of an intrusion that results in strain, as some may suggest or whether, as the transactional model of stress would suggest, it is the perceptions of intrusions that result in strain. Overall, these findings suggest that it is the perception of intrusions, not necessarily the intrusion itself that results in strain. This indicates that when it comes to strain outcomes, it is the subjective, rather than the objective, experience of an intrusion that matters.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Chen

P. Y.

Spector

P. E.

(1991). Negative affectivity as the underlying cause of correlations between stressors and strains. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(3), 1991.

Fletcher

K.A.

Potter

S.M.

Telford

B.N.

(2016, April). Work, interrupted: Measuring subjective interruption experience and its strain outcomes. Poster to be presented at the 31st annual meeting of the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology, Anaheim, CA.

Fletcher

K.A.

Telford

B.N.

Frick

S.E.

Bedwell

W.L.

(2015, April). The Devil is in the Details: Checklist Design Optimization. Poster presented at the fourth annual Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in Health Care: Improving Outcomes, Baltimore, MD.

Healey

A. N.

Primus

C. P.

Koutantji

(2007). Quantifying distraction and interruption in urological surgery. Qualitative Safety in Health Care, 16, 135-139.

Helton

W. S.

(2004, September). Validation of a short stress state questionnaire. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 48, No. 11, p. 1238-1242). SAGE Publications.

Jett

Q. R.

George

J. M.

(2003). Work interrupted: A closer look at the role of interruptions in organizational life. Academy of Management Review, 28(3), 494-507.

Lin

B. C.

Kain

J. M.

Fritz

(2013). Don’t interrupt me! An examination of the relationship between intrusions at work and employee strain. International Journal of Stress Management, 20(2), 77-94.

Lovibond

P. F.

Lovibond

S. H.

(1995). The structure of negative emotional states: Comparison of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) with the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33(3), 335-343.

Magrabi

S. Y.

Day

R. O.

Coiera

(2010). Errors and electronic prescribing: A controlled laboratory study to examine task complexity and interruption effects. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 17(5), 575-583.

10.

Morgan

R. B.

Casper

W. J.

(2000). Examining the factor structure of participant reactions to training: A multidimensional approach. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 11(3), 301-317.

11.

Perlow

L. A.

(1999). The time famine: Toward a sociology of work time. Administrative science Quarterly, 44(1), 57-81.

12.

Sitzmann

Johnson

(2014). The paradox of seduction by irrelevant details: How irrelevant information helps and hinders self-regulated learning. Learning and Individual Differences, 34, 1-11.

13.

Spira

J. B.

Feintuch

J. B.

(2005). The cost of not paying attention: How interruptions impact knowledge worker productivity: Basex New York, NY.

An Initial Look at the Effects of Interruptions On Strain

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References