Individual mindfulness and IT systems use - mitigating negative consequences of information overload

At modern IT workplaces, employees have access to a high amount of information that is provided by enterprise IT systems. In such environments, too much information can lead to information overload. One means to counteract negative consequences of information overload is a high extent of cognitive mindfulness among users. In this article, we analyze the interplay between information overload and mindfulness with regard to the realization of business process outcomes. The associated hypotheses are tested based on 221 complete responses from a survey among sales professionals of a large financial institution who were required to use a newly introduced customer relationship management system. The results from partial least squares analyses suggest that the presence of information overload decreases the subsequent use of the system and reduces the overall business process outcome. However, we found that cognitive capabilities in form of mindfulness mitigate the negative consequences of information overload.