From theoretical discourse to classroom practice: postcolonial criticism, pedagogical translation, and student reception in multicultural contexts.

Digital technology is now integrated into daily workflows, changing the way employees coordinate tasks and communicate with each other. The empirical context of this study is digitally mediated work, where employees routinely use enterprise information systems, communication and collaboration platforms, data-driven applications, and other digital tools to complete and coordinate work. These tools are often adopted to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs (), but they may also require employees to manage multiple systems, respond to messages in real time, and remain available online. Such demands increase cognitive and time pressure, speed up the pace of work (), and blur the boundaries between work and personal life (). They also help explain the growing attention to technology overload (TO), a perceived technology-related pressure that arises when continuous interaction with digital tools exceeds employees’ cognitive and temporal resources (; ; ; ). Much technostress research has treated TO mainly as a harmful demand, emphasizing its negative implications for employees and organizations (; ). More recent work suggests that this view may be incomplete. Employees may appraise TO differently depending on digital demand intensity and available resources, such as technical support, training, participation in technology-related changes, and psychological safety (; ; ; ; ). Recent validation work also suggests that technostress creators should be interpreted alongside inhibitors that help employees manage them (). TO can require employees to learn, adapt, and build new capabilities while still creating strain (; ). Employees may also use adaptive strategies, including skill development and job crafting, despite the strain produced by overload (). These findings suggest that employees do not only passively experience technology-related demands; they may also adjust their work to remain engaged. However, it remains unclear how employees move from the resource costs of TO to adaptive responses, and whether these responses can translate into higher work engagement. Cultural background may also be relevant to understanding responses to TO. Much of the available evidence comes from Western contexts, leaving open the question of how these processes unfold in other environments. This study focuses on Chinese organizations, where strong performance expectations and hierarchical structures are common. These characteristics may make job demands more likely to be interpreted as opportunities to demonstrate ability or gain recognition (; ). This environment provides a relevant context for studying how employees respond to TO.