How Electronic Performance Monitoring Affects Knowledge Sharing: An Organizational Justice Perspective

As an information system, electronic performance monitoring (EPM) is widely adopted in Asian digital workplaces with expanded functional applications. Based on organizational justice theory, this study focuses on the Asian cultural context and explores the relationship between EPM and employee knowledge sharing from the perspective of perceived organizational justice, using two-wave empirical data collected from 269 respondents. The results show that developmental EPM is positively associated with both explicit and implicit knowledge sharing, whereas deterrent EPM exerts no significant effect on knowledge sharing. In terms of organizational justice, developmental EPM has a positive impact on both procedural and distributive justice, while deterrent EPM shows a negative effect on these two justice dimensions. Further, organizational justice plays a mediating role in the relationship between developmental EPM and knowledge sharing, and a suppressing role in the link between deterrent EPM and knowledge sharing. Additionally, employee exchange ideology moderates the positive relationship between developmental EPM and distributive justice. Grounded in organizational justice theory, this study probes the effects of EPM on knowledge sharing under different justice foci, clarifies the mediating and suppressing mechanisms of organizational justice in the above relationships, and identifies the boundary condition of employee exchange ideology. It thus enriches the theoretical research on EPM and knowledge sharing, and provides actionable implications for the rational application of EPM in Asian digital workplaces to promote employee knowledge sharing behavior.