Controlling my boundaries: Explaining how and when workplace privacy promotes creative performance

Abstract

Organizational research has rarely examined the role that privacy plays in the workplace, lacking a clear conceptualization of privacy. The current research defines privacy as a perception of having control over one’s social interactions and develops a model that examines how privacy at work relates to creative performance. Taking a self-determination theory lens as the guiding theoretical framework, the current theoretical model argues that privacy leads to higher levels of creative performance through psychological empowerment because privacy enables employees to meet the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The current model also theorizes that introversion and employee bonding moderate the relationship between privacy and psychological empowerment to predict creative performance. Data from a three-wave, multisource field study of 214 employees from 35 work units in multinational high-technology organization indicated that psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between privacy and creative performance. In addition, results indicated that introversion strengthens the relationship between privacy and psychological empowerment and that psychological empowerment mediates the moderated relationship between privacy and introversion. However, the results did not support the moderating role of employee bonding on this relationship. Overall, the results show that employees gain motivational benefits from having privacy at work and that privacy has important implications for creative performance.