Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): Organizational Control and Justice Perspectives

Bring your Own Device (BYOD) is an increasingly popular phenomenon at work, with several potential benefits (e.g., cost reduction, convenience and flexibility) and concerns (e.g., security risk, blurring of work-life boundary, and privacy infringement). Yet, systematic research incorporating theoretical perspectives on BYOD has been limited. This paper analyzes BYOD by integrating organizational control and justice frameworks. For control, approaches advanced by Hopwood, Ouchi and Edwards were adopted, covering simple control, administrative/bureaucratic control, technical/technological control, social control, and self control. The justice framework includes both distributive and procedural fairness. It is posited that justice/fairness mediates the effects of the control mechanisms. Practices under various controls that are seen as fair or unfair are discussed and recommendations provided.