Mine or ours: email privacy expectations, employee attitudes, and perceived work environment characteristics

R. Agarwal and Florence Rodhain ()
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Florence Rodhain: MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - UM2 - Université Montpellier 2 - Sciences et Techniques - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School

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Abstract: In spite of the growing importance of ethical and privacy concerns in the information age, there is a surprising paucity of academic literature on the subject. The research reported in this paper attempts to address this gap by focusing on privacy perceptions related to email. We adopt a behavioral perspective on the use of email in that we treat email policy as an embodiment of managerial beliefs and values about the employeremployee relationship and the role of communication in the workplace. Specifically, we examine employee attitudes towards email, their perceptions and expectations regarding the privacy and ownership of email, and a variety of work environment characteristics. Drawing upon prior theoretical work in organizational behavior and the use of email in work contexts, we propose a variety of research hypotheses. Data gathered from a sample of 193 respondents which includes email users from two different national contexts with different email policies in the host organizations is used to test the hypotheses. While we do not examine the effects of a specific policy in this study, our results nonetheless have interesting implications for organizations desirous of constructing an email policy. Theoretical implications as well as guidelines for practicing managers are offered.

Date: 2002-01-07
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03904969v1
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Published in 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Jan 2002, Big Island, United States. pp.2471-2480, ⟨10.1109/HICSS.2002.994186⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03904969

DOI: 10.1109/HICSS.2002.994186

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