Authoritarian Leadership, Electronic Monitoring and Employee Well-Being in Chinese Information Technology Industry: The Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion and Psychological Detachment

HRMARS - Employee well-being has become a critical concern in China’s information technology (IT) industry, where demanding work cultures, authoritarian supervisory practices, and pervasive digital monitoring may intensify psychological strain among frontline technical employees. Although prior research has examined leadership control and electronic monitoring separately, limited attention has been given to how these two organizational practices jointly influence employee well-being and the psychological mechanisms through which these effects occur. Guided by Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this paper develops an integrated framework linking authoritarian leadership and electronic monitoring to employee well-being through two mediating mechanisms: emotional exhaustion and psychological detachment. Emotional exhaustion represents the resource depletion pathway, whereas psychological detachment represents the recovery pathway through which employees mentally disengage from work and restore resources. Employee well-being is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct comprising psychological, social, workplace, and subjective well-being. The proposed study focuses on frontline, non-executive technical employees in large IT enterprises located in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design is proposed, with purposive sampling, online questionnaire distribution through organizational gatekeepers, and PLS-SEM for hypothesis testing. This paper contributes to the literature by integrating leadership-based control and technology-enabled surveillance within one COR-informed model and by clarifying how resource depletion and impaired recovery explain employee well-being in China’s high-pressure IT context.