Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are ubiquitous in today’s world of work [1]. Employee performance and well-being in using ICT provide business organisations with a competitive advantage, improving the flow of decision-making circuits, bringing actors together and creating a more flexible, reactive and agile organisation to respond to the new and constantly evolving challenges of work [2, 3]. Indeed, several studies [4, 5,6] have shown that ICTs lead to major transformations in the processes of managerial activity, such as maximising productive capacity, flexibility, reorganisation of groups, development of multi-skilling, etc. Their effects are also measured on employee activities such as the enrichment of knowledge at work, speed in managing files and shortening of processing times [7, 8]. Other studies [9, 10, 11] have shown that the use of ICTs most often generates additional workload causing health problems for employees in organisations.
Moreover, employees in developing countries may be less well prepared for the ICT revolution in the workplace due to the digital divide between developed and developing countries [12, 13]. As a result, developing countries are likely to experience challenges with ICT-based work practices. This study aimed to examine the impact of ICT demands on performance and psychological well-being at work (PWBW) of employees in a public service sector organisation in the developing country of Gabon.
ICT and Performance
As Engeström's activity system model (1999) points out, the use of ICT in organisations often involves new operating rules and leads to a reconfiguration in the division of labour - horizontal and vertical – [14]. In other words, from a developmental and job renewal perspective, technologies are resources which lead to greater flexibility and agility in the management of employees' activities and increase room for manoeuvre by enriching the work, provided of course that the system itself is flexible and authorises initiative and flexibility in the activity [15].
Based on ICT shared mental models, it has also been demonstrated in the literature that the use of ICT is a source of performance both at organisational level and in terms of the collective and collaborative practices of employees [16, 17].
In the context of developing African countries, studies [18, 19] have found that the use of ICT in administrative activities in the education sector contributes to the performance of professionals.
Nevertheless, this constructive nature of ICT in relation to employees' activities is also discussed. According to some authors [20, 21] (e.g., Gualano et al., 2023; Santos et al., 2023), ICT allows activities that have been done or not done, or not done well enough or quickly to be monitored and supervised. These technologies, which Bobillier Chaumon [22, 23] describes as prescriptive, close off opportunities for mobilising intelligence and severely restrict the employee's capacity for expression and initiative.
In terms of the approaches of Compeau, Higgins and Huff (1999) on the feeling of computer self-efficacy (CSE) - which they established in reference to Bandura's eponymous theory (1977), in the context of organisational change accentuated by the use of ICT, some professionals doubt their capacity to adequately master these tools, and also their potential for adaptation in the face of the demands of this new mediated activity [24]. The creative abilities of employees can be altered or inhibited by devices that are too cognitively costly, which can induce psychological suffering in these professionals [22]. Indeed, in addition to the loss of autonomy, just-in-time work, and de-subjectification at work, certain tools with prescriptive aims force workers to stick to set quotas only and maximise the profit of work units according to pre-established work standards, to the detriment of work well done and best practice[25]. Thus, the present study aimed to examine the predictive effect of ICT demands on the performance of civil servants. The following hypothesis was formulated.
Hypothesis 1: ICT demands predict the performance of public civil servants.
ICT and PWBW
Employees’PWBW is influenced by their perceptions of work tools, work organisation, and the quality of psychosocial relationships [26]. The person-environment (P-E) fit theory [27, 28] is consistent with the view that a higher perception of ICT demands by employees is associated with lower PWBW due to the distress caused by using the technologies. ICT-use is said to enhance employee PWBW, providing easier access to information for quick and appropriate solutions to workplace problems they encounter [5-29, 30].
However, the use of ICT can induce forms of work intensification or acceleration as well as an increase in the number of tasks to be performed, reducing room to manoeuvre [31, 32]. In this regard, ICT-driven work may have the paradoxical effect of harming employee PWBW through cognitive overinvestment or work overload [33]. Moreover, excessive ICT demands can lead to a loss of the meaning of work among employees [34], a poor person-environment fit [29], or a poor person-job fit [35] (Kristof-Brown, 2007), as well as poor teamwork [36]. This study seeks to examine ICT demands and PWBW relationships in the Gabon public service sector. The following hypothesis is proposed.
Hypothesis 2: ICT demands predict the PWBW of public civil servants.
ICT Demands and Employee Position Levels
It has been shown in the literature [37, 38], that the perception of the impact of ICT depends on the professional social categories in organisations (e.g., hierarchical position in the organisation). To our knowledge, there are no studies on the impacts of ICT on the performance and PWBW of employees according to employee position levels in developing countries such as Gabon. The objective of this article is to determine whether employee position levels in the civil service explain the impact of ICT on the performance and PWBW of civil servants. The following hypothesis was formulated.
Hypothesis 3: The impact of ICT demands on performance and PWBW differ across employee position levels.
Purpose of the Present Study
Like most African countries, Gabon is rapidly adopting ICT-supported work practices, which is expected to increase managerial efficiency. In doing so, it has introduced the Internet and social networks (Web 2.0) for use by civil service employees, enabling them to have more contact with each other. They use their resources to transmit and share information; to collaborate, exchange, and communicate asynchronously and synchronously (instant messaging and webcam); and create action-oriented spaces of expertise [15]. For instance, the use of collaborative technologies (e.g., groupware) would optimize teamwork across the various public sector establishments [39, 40]. This study had two main goals: (1) to investigate concurrent and prospective associations between ICT and performance and PWBW; and (2) to examine whether employee position levels explain the impact of ICT on the performance and PWBW of public servants. Our main hypotheses were that ICT demands will predict performance (H1) and PWBW (H2). We also expected employee position level to explain the relationships between ICT demands and performance and PWBW (H3).
It is important to note that most studies on ICT and performance and PWBW have been conducted in developed Western countries, so the generalisability of the findings to non-Western and developing countries is questionable. Given that little empirical evidence exists for the effects of ICT on performance and PWBW in non-Western countries, the present study used a civil servant sample from Gabon from an under-researched cultural context. The need for research on this topic in non-Western, developing countries is supported by findings that show that the strength of the associations between performance and PWBW varies across different cultures [41, 42].