Theorizing technological spatial intrusion for ICT enabled employee innovation: The mediating role of perceived usefulness

Abstract

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has reiterated the importance of using ICTs not only for ensuring continuity of employee work and but also for facilitating innovation. However, extensive use of organizational ICTs presents the potential for employee monitoring, control, and surveillance, which could be viewed adversely by employees leading to negative outcomes. Motivated by this dilemma about the mixed influence of organizational ICTs on employee outcomes, we first draw upon the literature on spatial intrusion to identify the two dimensions of employee technological spatial intrusion (TSI) — employee accessibility and employee visibility. Next, taking a locus of causality perspective, we examine the mechanisms through which the two dimensions of TSI impact ICT enabled employee innovation. Our research suggests that TSI may advance or inhibit employee innovation depending on the interactional meaning that the employees attach to the experienced intrusions. We test the proposed research model via a survey of 163 employees from diverse organizations who regularly use ICTs for their work. Results indicate that employee accessibility generally has positive, while employee visibility has negative relationships with employee innovation. Further, we demonstrate that ‘ICT usefulness perceptions’ mediate the relationships between accessibility and ICT-enabled innovation. Our research is among the first to conceptualize TSI and theorize its impact on employee innovation. Demonstrating the positive and negative influence of TSI may help organizations to design technologies that are perceived as more useful by employees. Together, the results from our study have implications for undertaking technological assessments for facilitating employee innovation.