The use of electronic monitoring in the workplace is widespread, despite past research has evidenced the benefits of self-leadership on individual work outcomes, little has been understood about how electronic monitoring affects employee work behaviors through emotions. In this research, our study investigates how employees perceive level of surveillance to generate different emotions and reduce their feedback work behavior. Insights from the theory of emotional events, we examine the mediating role of two emotions: workplace loneliness and moral emotions, and selected workplace status as the boundary condition for our study. Results from three-wave data of 395 employees in China reveal that perceived level of surveillance at work enhances employees’ feedback avoiding behavior by increasing their workplace loneliness and decrease moral emotion. Moreover, workplace status weakens the relationship between perceived level of surveillance and two emotions. In order to reduce the occurrence of feedback avoiding behavior among employees, organizations should make reasonable use of electronic monitoring and pay attention to employees' psychological feelings. Theoretical contributions, practical implications, and directions for future research are discussed.
