The impact of IT-mediated interruptions on flow and task performance

Whilst contemporary information technologies (IT) such as emails and notifications constitute an integral part of employees’ daily work and fosters ongoing connectivity and task performance, they also create unintended outcomes associated with the disruption to individuals’ primary task activities. Thereby, an increasing amount of IT-mediated interruptions are induced by contemporary real-time Enterprise Systems (ES) such as SAP S/4HANA. However, despite strong interest of scholars and practitioners in IT-mediated interruptions they are scarcely addressed in information systems (IS) research and our understanding about their nature and effects is limited. More specifically, research falls short to explain the impact of IT-mediated interruptions on the cognitive state of flow. Thus, this dissertation project follows a call for research and extends the nomological network of IT-mediated interruptions by flow theory aiming to investigate how IT-mediated interruptions are impacting flow and task performance. Overall, this dissertation project aims to inform the design of IT-mediated interruptions in an attempt to improve individuals’ flow and subsequent task performance.