A field experiment for understanding the unintended impact of Internet monitoring on employees : Policy satisfaction, organizational citizenship behaviour and work motivation

Abstract

Internet monitoring is widely deployed in organizations as an attempt to regulate employees’ cyberloafing behaviour, which is defined as employees’ usage of Internet for non-work-related purposes. Although previous studies have examined the effectiveness of Internet monitoring in regulating employees’ cyberloafing, the impact of Internet monitoring on employees’ perceptions or behaviours other than cyberloafing has not been investigated. As a first step to address this research gap, we conduct a field experiment to study the impact of Internet monitoring on employees’ policy satisfaction, organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and work motivation. We found that Internet monitoring decreased employees’ policy satisfaction and OCB. We also found that Internet monitoring decreased employees’ intrinsic work motivation, although it slightly increased employees’ extrinsic work motivation. Our study contributes to the literature by examining the unintended impact of Internet monitoring on employees. It also has implications for organizations to make appropriate decisions regarding whether to implement Internet monitoring.