Determinanten und Auswirkungen von Informationsüberflutung am Arbeitsplatz.

BACKGROUND: Alvin Toffler first used the term 'information overload' in his book Future Shock published in 1970. Nearly 50 years later this concept has become reality. We conducted a systematic review on the determinants of information overload and its consequences on health, quality of life, performance and quality of work. METHODS: We searched EBSCOhost (Academic Search Complete, BusinessSource Complete, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, PSYNDEX), PubMed, and Web of Science (until March 2017) using a sensitive search string. The search resulted in 2535 records. This article is restricted to quantitative studies. The data of 16 quantitative studies were extracted. All studies were judged to be of poor methodological quality: most studies showed a cross-sectional design and reported only univariate correlation coefficients. Due to the high heterogeneity of the studies, a meta-analysis could not be conducted. RESULTS: The results of our systematic review point to a relationship between high amounts of information at the workplace and perceived information overload. According to the included studies, information overload is positively associated with work time spent with emails, work-family conflicts and negatively associated with among others technical support, segmentation between work and family life, and appropriate email management techniques. DISCUSSION: The most striking result was a clear lack of methodologically sound studies on the determinants and consequences of information overload. Future studies on this important topic should provide a defined study base, take the temporal sequence into account and quantify the amount of information.