REMOTE WORK AND INFORMATION SECURITY: DOES DETERRENCE CONTROL POLICY VIOLATIONS?

The shift to remote and hybrid work as the new normal highlights the need for research into organizational control mechanisms that can reduce violations of Information Security Policies (ISP). Although the punishment or the "stick" approach is a widely used control mechanism to achieve organizational objectives in a traditional work-from-office environment, the effectiveness of such deterrence approaches in mitigating deviant behaviors in a non-traditional work environment is not well understood. This work-in-progress paper examines the role of deterrence perceptions in a remote working environment in reducing employees’ ISP violations. We used PLS-SEM to analyze data collected from 140 working professionals in India. Preliminary results from the analyses indicate that the perception of computer monitoring enhances employees' awareness of sanctions, while the perceived severity of these sanctions negatively affects their ISP violation intentions. Our findings have implications for framing organizational policy in the current remote and hybrid work environments.