Privacy and Digital Work

Working, communicating, and collaborating in digital workplaces are directly connected to the unprecedented collection of employee data. As a result, increasing workplace digitalization is raising novel privacy challenges and corresponding employee privacy concerns. For instance, blurring boundaries between work and private domains as well as increasing transparency of employees’ actions are changing the nature of employee privacy. Against this backdrop, it is crucial to develop a contextualized understanding of how digital work leads to challenges for employee privacy, what employee privacy concerns look like, and how they can be measured. Comprehending the relationship between digital work and employee privacy has never been more critical and is essential to facilitate workplace digitalization.

Investigating privacy-related challenges of digital work is a topic of increasing interest that will continue to gain relevance. In response to increasing workplace digitalization and corresponding privacy challenges, this dissertation explores the evolving issue of employee privacy concerns. By following a grounded theory approach, combined with a mixed methods methodology, this work provides an essential conceptualization of the contextual nature of employee privacy, dimensions of employee privacy concerns, a corresponding measurement model, and a conceptual model of the relationship between digital work and privacy. Overall, the results of this dissertation provide a nuanced understanding of employee privacy issues in digital workplaces and corresponding recommendations on managing employee privacy and mitigating employee privacy concerns.