A Social Exchange Model of Employee Reactions to Electronic Performance Monitoring

Abstract

The primary goal of this study was to develop and test a social exchange model of employee reactions to electronic performance monitoring (EPM) to help managers use EPM more effectively. This study proposed that certain EPM practices are related to perceptions of interpersonal and informational justice, which in turn build trust in the manager, along with other important attitudes and outcomes. In a sample of 257 call center representatives, the purpose for using EPM, development versus control, was associated with interpersonal justice perceptions, but EPM-based feedback characteristics, whether the feedback was timely, specific, and constructive, were not. Furthermore, the presence of an explanation for EPM was positively related to perceptions of informational justice. Moreover, interpersonal and informational justice perceptions were positively related to trust in the manager, which in turn was positively related to job performance and job satisfaction.

Notes

¹In the pilot study, 26 undergraduates (9 male, 17 female) from the psychology participant pool at a northeastern public university participated in an Internet survey in exchange for half an hour of research credit. Participation was restricted to those individuals who believed their employer used some type of electronic monitoring, mostly by video cameras (69.23%).

²We follow the recommendations of Kenny (2003), who argued that the goodness-of-fit index and the adjusted goodness-of-fit index are affected by sample size and should not be used.

³Given that the path between EPM explanation and informational justice was particularly strong in the proposed model, we conducted a principal components analysis which revealed two factors with eigenvalues over one, accounting for 57.49% of the variance. The break in the scree plot was also indicative of a two-factor solution. The first factor explained 41.15% of the variance and the second factor explained 16.34% of the variance. The first factor taps the informational justice measure, and the expected items all have loadings in excess of .5 without indications of cross loading. On the other hand, the second factor taps into EPM explanation, and once again, the expected items all have loadings over .5. In addition, the zero-order correlation between EPM explanation and informational justice was .40. Taken together, these results indicate that the presence of an EPM explanation and informational justice are distinct but closely related constructs.

^aThe scales for manager rating and participation rate are very different, thus it is not surprising that the Cronbach's alpha is low. The range on manager rating is 1 to 5, whereas the range for participation rate is .02 to .82. Manager rating and participation rate are highly correlated (r = .61). When manager rating and participation rate are both converted to z-scores, Cronbach's alpha is .74.

*p < 05.

**p < .01.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

⁴The Sobel test multiplies the unstandardized path coefficients and then divides by the standard error (Baron & Kenny, 1986). The Sobel test produces a test statistic that is distributed as a Z, along with accompanying significance levels.

**p < .01.