ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore the negative impact of Information Technology (IT) at the organizational level. We distinguish four important factors to consider when trying to understand the dark side of IT in organizations and what it can do to workers. The four factors that we discuss are organizational design and structure, work, people impacts, and technology. All of these are interrelated when it comes to understanding IT-related overload and IT addiction in organizations. This chapter focuses on the negative consequences of IT-related overload and IT addiction for business organizations and, more broadly, for society. We discuss work substitution and some of the problems associated with the use of robots. The declining demand for labour is linked to how well tasks can be processed by machines instead of humans with an average level of education. Nowadays, technology can be substituted for people performing not only routine but also non-routine cognitive tasks such as complex decision-making. Furthermore, technology has a competitive advantage when it comes to conducting structured and repetitive tasks. We discuss the phenomenon of task underload and provide examples of work substitution as reported in the literature.
