Exposure to Information and Communication Technology and its Relationship to Work Engagement

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been constituted as a pivotal role in our society. Specifically, ICT has becoming an inherent part of work to guarantee the competitiveness of the organizations in the labor market (Majchrzak & Borys 1998). From the very beginning, the impact of technology on psychosocial health has been inconclusive. Meanwhile, different scholars have shown the negative effects of technology on users (e.g., Bohlin & Hunt 1995; Todman & Monaghan 1994), and others have demonstrated that its impact differs depending on the type of exposure and the mediating variables, like appraisal of exposure (Chua et al. 1999; Majchrzak & Borys 1998; Salanova & Schaufeli 2000). Despite this, numerous studies have focused on the dark side of the impact of technology. Consequently, there is a lack of studies on the positive effects of types of technology exposure on psychosocial health. Based on the Positive Organizational Psychology movement (Salanova et al. 2005), the present study focuses on the positive impact of types of technology exposure and positive appraisal on work engagement.