Untangling the Recursive Relationship Between Workplace Surveillance Usage and Employee Performance.

Companies increasingly employ autonomy and control as distinct modes of workplace surveillance to ensure that employees’ activities align with corporate objectives and boost their performance. Unlike previous work that has delved into the unidirectional effect of autonomy or control on boundary spanners’ performance, we deliver empirical evidence testifying to a recursive relationship between surveillance technology usage and workplace performance, thereby aiding in reconciling controversial findings within extant literature. To further elucidate this relationship, we divide the recursive relationship into asymmetrical and symmetrical categories encompassing four paradigms: positive sustaining, negative sustaining, forward suppressing, and backward suppressing. By scrutinizing collaborative scenarios involving boundary spanners in a workplace environment, we illuminate the existence of a feedback loop from workplace surveillance due to the recursive influence of priori and posterior beliefs. Insights from this study bear implications for both theory and practice by highlighting the recursive impact between surveillance technology usage and workplace performance.