Investigating the influence of emotions on Shadow IT usage behaviours

Shadow IT (SIT) usage can be characterized as follows: (1) employees' voluntary adoption of unapproved IT tools for the purpose of working more efficiently, and (2) employees' infringement on corporate security policies even when they act without malicious intent. We used the coping model of user adaptation to conduct a survey of 480 SIT users to investigate the ways in which employees cope with SIT usage. Our findings indicate that in the context of SIT usage, employees feel satisfied regardless of their level of control over their SIT usage and that a greater level of perceived control allows employees to maximise their performance at work, increasing satisfaction. We also show that perceived threat fosters the implementation of security measures via problem-focused coping (PFC) behaviours and mitigates emotion-focused coping (EFC) behaviours. As SIT usage can be perceived both as beneficial and threatening, we contribute to behavioural information systems (IS) research by showing that even when employees covertly use unapproved IT resources and infringe on corporate IT policies, they nevertheless engage in risk mitigation to preserve the increased efficiency they gain from using SIT.