How Supervisor Relationships and Protection Rules Affect Employees’ Attempts to Manage Health Information at Work

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores the issue of health information sharing at work through the lens of Communication Privacy Management theory. As employees must often share some health information at work for various reasons (e.g., to obtain sick leave or accommodations), determining how much to share and how to manage health information is important. The leader–member exchange relationship, stigma, risk perceptions, and the degree of privacy of each individual’s health information were investigated. The results show that leader–member exchange, stigma, and privacy contribute to an individual’s willingness to disclose health information at work and that leader–member exchange impacts perceptions of risk associated with sharing health information.