Security Monitoring and Employee Outcomes : A Systematic Review of Effects on Attitudes, Behaviour, and Wellbeing

Sammanfattning

Organisations increasingly deploy security monitoring technologies to protect information as-sets, yet these controls may paradoxically undermine security by eroding employee trust andprompting resistance. Despite a growing body of empirical research, the literature remainsfragmented across disciplines and theoretical traditions, with no systematic synthesis examin-ing how security monitoring specifically affects employee outcomes. This thesis conducts aPRISMA-guided systematic literature review with bibliometric analysis, searching six academicdatabases and synthesising 108 empirical studies published between 1992 and 2026 to addresstwo questions: (1) What employee outcomes have been examined in empirical research onorganisational security monitoring? (2) What effects of security monitoring on employee at-titudes, behaviour, and wellbeing have been reported? Drawing on agency theory, deterrencetheory, organisational control theory, psychological reactance theory, and organisational justicetheory, the review develops a multi-theoretic conceptual framework that maps monitoring char-acteristics to employee outcomes through explanatory mechanisms and contextual conditions.Thematic synthesis following the Thomas and Harden three-stage protocol produces thirty-fourdescriptive themes across the three outcome domains and nine cross-cutting analytical themes.Attitudinal and wellbeing effects are predominantly negative; behavioural effects are mixed,with monitoring improving compliance and simple-task productivity while eroding citizenshipbehaviour, increasing counterproductive work behaviour, and triggering resistance. Structuralfeatures of monitoring regimes explain more variance than the communicative overlays com-monly deployed to mitigate them, and monitoring corrodes the very relational resources thatmight otherwise buffer its costs. The findings challenge the assumption that strong leadershipor good communication can offset intrusive monitoring, and point instead toward minimisingstructural intrusiveness as the more promising design strategy. The thesis contributes a multi-theoretic integrative framework for the security monitoring–employee outcomes relationship,the elevation of perceived privacy invasion as a cross-cutting moderated-mediation mechanismand surveillance stress as a candidate construct beyond the existing five-lens framework, andan empirical repositioning of deterrence theory and procedural-justice theory in light of thereviewed evidence. Priorities for future research include AI-based and algorithmic monitor-ing, biometric monitoring, measurement development for surveillance stress, designs targetingthe amplification of pre-existing inequality, longitudinal and quasi-experimental studies, andbroadening the cultural base of the empirical literature beyond its current US and East-Asianconcentration.