An eye on your work: How empowerment affects the relationship between electronic surveillance and counterproductive work behaviours

Abstract

Attitudes towards surveillance in the workplace play an important role in determining whether surveillance systems and practices have a positive or negative impact on work behaviour. A survey study of employed Australians (n = 406) was used to test a model in which attitudes towards workplace surveillance were hypothesised to mediate the relationship between perceived level of surveillance at work and counterproductive work behaviours (CWBs). In accordance with expectations, higher levels of perceived surveillance were associated with more CWB, and this relationship was mediated by attitudes towards surveillance. We also theorised that work empowerment may act as a potential buffer against the impact of unfavourable surveillance attitudes on CWBs. Support was also found for this hypothesis as unfavourable surveillance attitudes were not associated with adverse work behaviour among employees who reported higher levels of work empowerment. We discuss how work design and leadership practices can be utilised to build a sense of empowerment in relation to employees’ work with the aim of attenuating some of the potentially negative effects of high levels of surveillance.

Keywords:

• counterproductive work behaviours
• surveillance attitudes
• work empowerment
• workplace surveillance

Acknowledgements

We thank Nima Herati for assistance with data analysis and Dallas Hanson for his contribution to collection of this data-set.

Notes

1. A metropolitan area was described in the survey as a major city with over 100,000 residents.

2. A small city was defined as an area with over 25,000 residents and a town was defined as an area with fewer than 25,000 residents.

3. Following Rucker, Preacher, Tormala, and Petty (2011) we do not use the term ‘partial’ mediation, as is the traditional practice when the direct effect is not reduced to zero in the presence of the mediator. These authors argue that due to the sensitivity of mediation effects to sample and total effect size, the concepts of ‘partial’ and ‘full’ mediation are meaningless.