Examining the side effects of organizational Internet monitoring on employees
ISSN: 1066-2243
Article publication date: 2 July 2020
Issue publication date: 24 October 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Internet monitoring in organizations can be used to monitor risks associated with Internet usage and information systems in organizations, such as employees' cyberloafing behavior and information security incidents. Extant research has mainly discussed the effect of Internet monitoring in achieving the targeted goals (e.g. mitigating cyberloafing behavior and information security incidents), but little attention has been paid to the possible side effects of Internet monitoring. Drawing on affective events theory, the authors attempt to reveal that Internet monitoring may cause side effects on employees' Internet usage policy satisfaction, intrinsic work motivation and affective organizational commitment.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a field experiment in a software development company. In total, 70 employees participated in the study. Mann–Whitney U test was employed to analyze the data.
Findings
The results suggest that Internet monitoring decreased employees' satisfaction with the Internet usage policy, intrinsic work motivation, as well as affective organizational commitment.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by examining the side effects of Internet monitoring on employees. It also has implications for organizations to make appropriate decisions regarding whether to implement Internet monitoring.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
A previous version of the paper was presented at ECIS 2019 (Jiang et al., 2019), and it has been substantially revised based on the feedback of the conference participants and the anonymous reviewers of Internet research. The authors would like to thank for their constructive feedback.This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 71901201, 71731010, 71874022, 71421001], Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation [Grant Number 1908085MG226], Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China [Grant Number WK2040160033], and China Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science project: [Grant Number 17YJC630072].
Citation
Jiang, H., Tsohou, A., Siponen, M. and Li, Y. (2020), "Examining the side effects of organizational Internet monitoring on employees", Internet Research, Vol. 30 No. 6, pp. 1613-1630. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-08-2019-0360
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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