The Impact of Awareness of Being Monitored on Policy Compliance: An Agency View

What is it about?

This paper expands the literature on computer monitoring and General Deterrence Theory (GDT). Our paper differs from prior research in this area, in that prior research has looked at computer monitoring and GDT in an experimental setting in which the character in the scenario was facing a fraudulent situation. While this does test the theory, it does so at the extreme boundary conditions and does not consider the possible confounding effect of the fraudulent activity. We investigate GDT utilizing a survey, which was administered to employees in organizations with computer usage policies. The results indicate that sanction severity and certainty have significant positive influences compliance intention. Awareness of being monitored has a significant positive influence on sanction severity, certainty and celerity. Sanction severity and certainty were fully mediate the relationship between awareness of being monitored and computer usage policy compliance intention.

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Why is it important?

With increased computer usage by employees in their daily job routines, computer abuse by employees has increased the potential for security vulnerabilities for organizations. Organizations have established various security countermeasures, such as sanctions and computer usage policies, to prevent computer abuse and protect organizational information assets. However, these policies are effective only to the extent that employees follow them. Thus, it is important for organizations to understand the factors that motivate employees to follow computer usage polices. Therefore, this paper investigates the impact of different countermeasures, such as perceived sanctions, and awareness of being monitored on compliance with computer usage policies by drawing upon agency theory and general deterrence theory. In testing the hypothesized relationships in the study, a survey was administered to full- and part-time employees who work for organizations with computer usage policies in place. The results indicate that perceived sanction severity and certainty have a significant positive influence on intention to comply with computer usage policies. Furthermore, awareness of being monitored is found to have a significant impact on penalties. Study results further indicate that penalties may be effective only to the extent that organizations can detect employees’ deviant behavior through managerial controls, such as computer monitoring.