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Article Excerpt
As the uses of new types of technology (e.g. internet-based applications) increase within work organizations, more and more employees face the likelihood that their organization will track their workplace behaviours using technology (Loch & Conger, 1996). In particular, about two-thirds of work organizations have implemented some type of employee monitoring and surveillance technology (MSTs; Orthmann, 1998), such as computer, e-mail or video monitoring in order to help measure, shape, or control the behaviour of employees. Computer monitoring has become prevalent in most organizations, and computer software allows employers to monitor employees' computer usage by recording activity logs for all software programmes used on a computer, access to resources on a local area network (LAN), logs of all internet sites visited, and detailed information about keystrokes. Furthermore, some computer monitoring software allows employers to obtain screenshots of the computer displays of employees connected to the network at any time. E-mail monitoring involves employers storing records of employee e-mails that are transferred through company servers and using keyword searches or natural language processing to locate and flag suspicious text. Video monitoring systems range from analogue time-lapse systems that record information every 10 to 60 seconds to newer digital video monitoring systems that can be installed visibly or invisibly, and that can transmit information to remote computer and surveillance stations.
Researchers have found that some employees dislike and distrust MST, and some may even actively thwart their organization's use of these systems by altering monitoring equipment/software or by avoiding monitored areas (Nussbaum & du Rivage, 1986; Stanton, 2000, 2002; Stanton & Weiss, 2000). It appears certain that if employees allocate effort to circumventing these systems, they may do so at the expense of performing more productive activities. If employees succeed in circumventing the systems, then the technology may provide little of its intended value to the organization. Thus, one might generally propose that the effectiveness of organizational MSTs depends to some degree on employees' willingness to comply with their use. Insights into employees' intentions on whether to comply with or resist the organizational use of MSTs may prove helpful in promoting both fair and effective use of these technologies.
Despite the reliance of organizational MST implementation on employee acceptance and compliance, very few studies in the domain of MST examine employees' acceptance and compliance with MST policies and practices as an outcome variable. Studies that investigated outcomes of MST from an employee perspective have examined whether the implementation or presence of MST policies and practices impacts perceptions of fairness and justice (Alge, 2001; Douthitt & Aiello, 2001; Hovorka-Mead, Ross, Whipple, & Renchin, 2002; Stanton, 2000), privacy concerns (Alge, 2001; Hovorka-Mead et al., 2002), task and job performance (Aiello & Kolb, 1995; Larson & Callahan, 1990; Stanton & Barnes-Farrell, 1996; Stanton &Julian, 2002; Stanton & Sarkar-Barney, 2003), organization attraction and turnover (Hovorka-Mead et al., 2002; Stanton & Lin, 2003), and employee well-being and job stress (Aiello & Kolb, 1995; Douthitt & Aiello, 2001; Holman, Chissick, & Totterdell, 2002). Among the few studies that have explicitly investigated acceptance of monitoring systems as a necessary prerequisite for their functioning are studies on acceptance and use of active badge monitoring systems (Harper, 1995), and awareness monitoring systems (Zweig & Webster, 2002, 2003). Harper's (1995) study of employee compliance with organizational policies found both individuals' group membership, social norms within groups, their workgroup identification as well as their participation in the implementation of the monitoring system to be precursors of compliance with the monitoring policy. Zweig and Webster (2002) found that if monitoring systems did not invade privacy, if adequate justifications for system implementation were provided, and if the systems were perceived to be useful, individuals were likely to accept monitoring systems. Both emotional stability and extraversion were found to moderate (Zweig & Webster, 2003) awareness monitoring adoption. In both Harper's and Zweig's studies, the monitoring systems (active badges and awareness monitoring) allowed employees to decide whether they wanted to use them or not. However, many employee monitoring systems are implemented with employees unable to choose whether they would like to be monitored or not. Hence, acceptance and compliance of organizationally-imposed monitoring systems such as computer, e-mail and video monitoring may incur employee resistance. To date, no quantitative empirical study has been conducted that examined employee compliance or resistance to organizationally-imposed monitoring and surveillance systems. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to examine attitudinal, personality and social antecedents of compliance and resistance with organizationally-imposed MST. In particular, we were interested in predicting different forms of employees' compliance and resistance behaviours, such as intentions to alter or manipulate MST equipment, intentions to avoid monitored areas or work domains, intentions to complain about the presence of MST to supervisors, intentions to passively comply with the systems, and intentions to actively support the systems by reporting non-compliant co-workers. We developed a framework using the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975, Ajzen, 1991) as well as research on ethical decision making in organizations (Loch & Conger, 1996; Trevino, 1986). As previous research has not investigated acceptance of monitoring systems that are implemented without employees having a say or choice in adopting the systems, we tested whether attitudes towards ones' organization and towards MST predict compliance and resistance intentions. Past research (Zweig & Webster, 2003) examined Big Five personality traits as moderators of acceptance. We complement this approach by testing whether employees' perceived behavioural control and social norms functioned as moderators of the relationship between attitudes and MST compliance intentions. We report a test of this framework as an attempt at understanding some of the antecedents of employees' compliance with and/or resistance to organizational uses of MST, such as computer, e-mail and video monitoring. In addition, our work extends previous research on the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour by further investigating the types of individual differences and organizational norms that may impact whether individuals' attitudes lead to the formation of behavioural intentions.
A framework for explaining compliance and resistance
Theory of planned behaviour
Ajzen (1991; Ajzen & Madden, 1986) developed the theory of planned behaviour, which has subsequently proved useful for the prediction of organizational behaviour based on attitudes, beliefs, social norms, intentions, and volitional control. In an earlier version of the theory (the theory of reasoned action), Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) defined attitudes as evaluative links between objects and attributes. Beliefs are probabilistic evaluations of relations between objects. Social norms refer to an individual's perception of the expectations of individuals in his or her social environment (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Meta-analytic reviews of the theory of reasoned action (Sheppard, Hartwick, & Warshaw, 1988) have supported Fishbein and Ajzen's claim that ' ... most behaviors can be accurately predicted from an appropriate measure of the individual's intention to perform the behavior in question' (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975, p. 380). Later, Ajzen (1991) amended the theory of reasoned action to account for volitional control of behaviour; inclusion of this variable represented one of the primary structural differences between the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behaviour. Volitional control served as a moderator variable: given a certain level of intentions, a behaviour would more likely occur in situations where the behaviour was under the control of the actor. The theory of reasoned action/theory of planned behaviour frameworks have apparent application to the study of compliance and resistance pertaining to MST. Employees may hold certain beliefs and may form attitudes about organizational monitoring and surveillance based on these beliefs. In turn, intentions to comply or resist may relate to attitudes as well as social norms about these behaviours. Whether employees then enact compliance or resistance behaviours may depend upon intentions and volitional control. Prior research has applied the theory of planned behaviour to examinations of unauthorized behaviour in organizations. For example, Loch and Conger (1996) applied the theory of planned behaviour to employees' use of computers in organizations, and found that attitudes and social norms predicted intentions to misuse the organization's computers. Their study thus supported the utility of the theory in predicting behavioural intentions with reference to uses of technology in organizations.
Ethical decision making
Trevino and Youngblood (1990; Trevino, 1986) developed and empirically tested a model of ethical decision making that predicted an interaction of individual and situational factors in determining ethical decision making in organizations; they thereby attempted to explain choice behaviour involving value conflicts within organizations. In their framework, cognitions (defined similarly to attitudes in work by Fishbein and Ajzen) predict behaviour, whereas situational and individual variables function as constraints (moderators) on the relationship between cognitions and behaviour. When testing their model, Trevino and Youngblood (1990) found that locus of control, organizational culture, and other variables influenced decision-making behaviour. In particular, Trevino and Youngblood's (1990) findings indicated that both contextual and individual difference variables functioned as main effects on ethical decision making, while locus of control functioned as a moderator, with an internal locus of control strengthening the relationship between environmental and other individual difference variables and ethical decision making. Although Trevino and Youngblood's work has not been applied specifically to employee compliance and resistance, these researchers have studied a variety of organizational situations where ethically-problematic choices arose. Because resistance to MSTs may run counter to organizational rules and compliance with MSTs may conflict with some employees' personal values (e.g. Stanton, 2002), we asserted that elements of Trevino and Youngblood's work would have applicability to studying behaviour related to MSTs.
Integration of theory of planned behaviour and Trevino's framework
For the purposes of explaining and predicting employees' compliance behaviour towards MST practices, Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and Trevino's framework (1986, Trevino & Youngblood, 1990) both contain similar elements that can be subsumed within the broader theory of planned behaviour model. In the theory of planned behaviour, attitudes are conceptualized as evaluations of objects. By evaluating an object, the individual attaches a certain positive or negative valence to the object. In a contemporary revision of the theory of reasoned action, Ajzen (1991) added the construct of perceived behavioural control to the theory of reasoned action in order to improve the model's applicability to situations in which the actors have environmental constraints that limit their behavioural options. Notably, Ajzen (1991) focused on the perception of such constraints, and thus cast behavioural control as a construct representing an individual's belief in his or her ability to act on an intention. In a similar vein, Trevino included the locus of control construct in her research to represent the perceived relationship between one's own behaviours and desired outcomes.
Looking again at the theory of planned behaviour, social norms within the organization are proposed to moderate the relationship between attitudes and intentions. In Fishbein and Ajzen's (19.75) work, perceived social norms provided the individual with information about which behaviours are socially rewarded and which are socially prescribed in a given situation. In an organizational setting, norms reflect what employees believe to be shared standards for acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in their workplace. For instance, employees' perceptions of their work environment as highly profit-oriented might lead to the expectation that instrumental behaviours of employees to generate revenue would be socially acceptable. The consideration of organizational norms and behavioural control facilitates the integration of an additional variable from Trevino's (1986) model of ethical decision making into a theory of planned behaviour-based framework....
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