Organizational Behaviour Comportement Organisationnel

found in the polychronicity, demand-control model, and perceived control over time literatures.In polychronic research, Cotte and Ratneshwar suggest that polychronic behavior thathappens to an individual is a source of stress (Cotte and Ratneshwar 1999, p. 198). Karasek’sdemand-control model suggests that stress and illness result from the interaction of high jobdemands and low decision latitude (1979; 1990). Further work determined that it was notdecision latitude, but more specifically job control that was important in reducing stress (Dollardand others 2000; Kushnir and Melamed 1991; Wall and others 1996). Perceived control overtime, or “a sense of mastery over how one allocates one’s time” (Macan 1994, p. 382) has alsobeen related to stress and overload. Control over time is negatively related to job-inducedtensions, somatic tensions (Macan 1994), stress (Nonis and others 1998), and role overload(Macan and others 1990).Considering other-initiated polychronic communication to be a form of low job controland low control over time, the moderating influence of this variable can be hypothesized. Whenthe second conversation is self-initiated, managing multiple conversations may reduce overloadand stress. When the second conversation is other-initiated or mandated, polychroniccommunication may increase feelings of work overload and stress.Proposition 2: The relationship between polychronic communication and work overload/stress ismoderated such that if the second conversation is self-initiated the relationship is negative and ifthe second conversation is other-initiated the relationship is positive.Moderator: Conversation ComplexityAnother moderator that is not included in Turner and Tinsley’s original model isconversation complexity. 7 It is expected that conversation complexity may moderate therelationship between polychronic communication and overload (mentioned above) as well as therelationship between polychronic communication and communication effectiveness (proposed byTurner and Tinsley).Even when the complexity of the conversations is extremely low, there is evidence thatproblems can occur. In a study of teenage use of Instant Messaging, teens who were gossipingabout a friend (A) to another friend (B) while also conversing with A had mistakenly sent amessage to A about A (Grinter and Palen 2002). Thus even with cognitively simpleconversations, there may be significant repercussions.What happens when the task or conversation is more complex? Cognitive researchsuggests that “people have a very limited working memory” (Tindall-Ford, Chandler, and Sweller1997, p. 257). Because of this limit, high information loads combined with high task complexityleads to information overload (Grise and Gallupe 2000). It is plausible that polychroniccommunication, which is a form of high information load, may be related to work overload whenthe conversations are complex.Proposition 3: The relationship between polychronic communication and work overload/stress ismoderated conversational complexity.7 It may be suggested that the concept of conversation complexity is similar to Turner andTinsley’s idea of message ambiguity. The difference is in the level of analysis. Turner andTinsley examine the difficulty involved in one particular message. This paper examines thedifficulty of the conversation itself, which may include multiple messages, as well as the thoughtsand ideas that occur during the conversation but never get transferred in an actual message.129