Watching the watchers: privacy concerns as a bridge between surveillance and trust

The fast growth of CCTV, keylogging, RFID and AI surveillance systems in workplaces has started to worry many about how much control employees have, their ability to feel safe and how teams can remain trustworthy (Ball, 2010). These instruments are supposed to increase both safety and efficient when they are used everywhere. However, these instruments often make employees feel their privacy is being invaded, impacting their reaction upon being watched (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015; Zhang et al., 2022). A major gap in knowledge remains on how employees seeing their privacy invaded influences their trust in the organization, and how this dynamic affects their dynamics (Martin et al., 2017). A model based on Communication Privacy Management (CPM) Theory is proposed to explain this mechanism to advance the understanding of the effects of surveillance on trust and points the way forward for research and practical applications.