A watched pot never boils: how appraisals of supervisor remote monitoring influence remote workers’ voice and silence

Abstract

ABSTRACT A significant percentage of the global workforce is now working remotely, thus prompting managers and organisations to adopt practices geared towards monitoring a remote workforce. Although remote monitoring practices provide managers with information regarding employee work progress and productivity, our understanding of how, why, and under what conditions such practices impact employees’ willingness to engage in voluntary extra-role behaviour intended to improve organisational functioning is limited. Drawing from the challenge-hindrance stress framework, our research provides insight into this issue. Specifically, we propose that the two types of remote monitoring (interactional and observational) will be appraised as stressful work demands that will differentially influence employees’ voice and silence. More precisely, we predict that interactional remote monitoring engenders voice because this form of monitoring tends to be appraised as a challenge, and that observational remote monitoring encourages silence because this form of monitoring tends to be appraised as a hindrance. Additionally, we argue that the complexity of one’s job will intensify the predicted indirect effects of interactional monitoring and observational monitoring paths on voice and silence, respectively. Results from two studies of remote workers largely support our predictions. We discuss implications to theory, research, and practice.