What Drives People to Share? The Relationship Between Working Style and Workplace FoMO

Abstract

Workplace FoMO is defined as the fear of missing important tasks, information, and knowledge. It is driven by the fear of the dread of experiencing the anger or psychological pressure, and indirect expectation of co-workers, managers or other stakeholders at the place of work. The term also refers to the loss of promising opportunities (Fear of Better Options – FoBO) and network possibilities which can lead to another phenomenon Fear of Doing Anything (FoDO) which refers to the state when someone is indecisive. After factorial analyses of the original 5 FoMO types of Alutaybi et al (2020) this study applies the following factors: valuable information gathering, professional networking, individual contribution to work, and social interaction. One of the influencing factors of FOMO is internal motivation which is connected to working style. Considering the internal motivation and attitude to work, based on Kahler’s 5 positive drives (1975) Hay (2009) developed the following working styles: hurry up, be perfect, please people, try hard and be strong. This research presents the relationship between working styles and workplace FoMO based on a questionnaire filled by 201 employees of an international automotive company. Results shows that expect ‘Try hard’, the other 4 working styles indicate correlation with at least one of the factors of working FoMO.