Newcomers' Stress and its Effects on Well-Being during an IT Organization's Socialization Process

Abstract

Previous research in other fields has shown an increasing interest in understanding newcomers’ stress and its impact on professionals’ well-being. However, we still have a limited understanding of newcomers’ stress and its emotional, behavioral, and psychological effects in the information technology organization (IT) and information system (IS) development contexts. Moreover, the newcomers’ socialization process into IT work or/ and organizations remains unexplored in the IS field. We conducted a qualitative and longitudinal case study (pre-COVID-19) that helped us understand newcomers’ stress from IS project work, and how its consequences emerge during their socialization process. We provided information in response to the call for more understanding of newcomers’ stress elements in the IT organization and IS project context. It is important to understand different stress elements and their consequences because these elements impact individuals’ attitudes, behaviors, job performance, and health among other things.