The Competitive Lure of Workplace Eavesdropping: Weighing Information Value and Social Risk

Informal information practices are central to organizational life, yet some remain hidden, stigmatized, and ethically contested. This study examines eavesdropping—when individuals gather information from others’ interactions without being the intended recipient—as an organizational information practice shaped by competition and risk-benefit evaluations. Drawing on Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory, we theorize eavesdropping as occurring when informational accessibility and privacy expectations diverge, extending CPM from information owners’ disclosure decisions to recipients’ decisions to attend to accessible information. Two online experiments with representative U.S. samples manipulated workplace competition, in-person versus remote settings, and information value. Competition was associated with greater eavesdropping intentions, and perceived information value mediated this relation. Social risk exerted a direct but non-mediating effect, indicating that employees weigh both potential utility and anticipated consequences. Eavesdropping intentions did not differ between in-person and remote contexts. These findings position eavesdropping as a consequential yet ethically ambivalent organizational information practice.