Employee Monitoring in the Digital Era: Managing the Impact of Innovation
Ključne riječi:
privacy, monitoring, trust, surveillance, empowerment, workplace, behavioursSažetak
The many obvious benefits that accompany digital technology have been matched by some less welcome and more contentious impacts. One of these is the steady erosion of privacy. For example monitoring and surveillance has become a fundamental part of the workplace environment, with employee performance often the main object of scrutiny. With companies now competing within a rapidly changing global economy, managers are forced to satisfy market trends that are driven by productivity and efficiency. Attempts to satisfy these imperatives have resulted in a relentless drive to improve performance and increase efficiency. In fact, the increasing number of organisations that monitor employees through advanced digital technologies has added a dystopian edge to existing employee privacy concerns, particularly as many employees are unable to exercise choice in relation to use of these technologies. If unaddressed, their concerns have potential to impact the psychological contract between employee and employer, resulting in loss of employee trust, negative attitudes and counterproductive work behaviours. This paper outlines some of the emerging issues relating to use of employee monitoring technologies. It summarises both management rationale for monitoring as well as employee privacy concerns in an effort to balance the perspectives of both parties.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Reference
AMA (2017), “Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance”, available at: http://www.amanet.org/research/ (31 January 2019).
Bijlsma, K., Koopman, P. (2003), “Introduction: trust within organisations”, Personnel Review, Vol. 32, No. 5, pp. 543-555.
Boxall, P., Purcell, J. (2011), Strategy and Human Resource Management, 3rd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Connell, J., Ferres, N., Travalione, T. (2003), “Engendering trust in manager-subordinate relationships”, Personnel Review, Vol. 32, No. 5, pp. 569-587.
Conway, N., Briner, R. B. (2002), “A daily diary study of affective responses to contract breach and exceeded promises”, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 287-302.
Craver, C. B. (2006), “Privacy issues affecting employers, employees and labour organizations”, Louisiana Law Review, Vol. 66, pp. 1057-1078.
Crowd Research Partners (2017), “Insider Threat Report”, Cyber-security Insiders, CA Technologies, available at: https://www.ca.com/content/dam/ca/us/files/ebook/insider-threat-report.pdf (16 August 2018).
Dietz, G., Fortin, M. (2007), “Trust and justice in the formation of joint consultation committees”, Journal of International Human Resource Management, Vol. 18, No. 7, pp. 1159-1181.
Dirks, K., Ferrin, D. L. (2002), “Trust in leadership: meta-analytic findings and implications for research and practice”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 87, No. 4, pp. 611-628.
Evans, L. (2007), “Monitoring technology in the American workplace: Would adopting English privacy standards better balance employee privacy and productivity?”, California Law Review, Vol. 95, pp. 1115-1149.
Ferrin, D. L., Dirks, K. T. (2003), “The use of rewards to increase and decrease trust: mediating processes and differential effects”, Organization Science, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 18-31.
Forbes (2012), “Employees really do waste time at work, available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2012/07/17/employees-really-do-waste-time-at-work/#b0461805e6da (16 August 2018).
Godfrey, B. (2001), “Electronic work monitoring: An ethical model”, in the Proceedings of the second Australian institute conference on computer ethics, Canberra, Australia, Academic Press, pp. 18-21.
Gould-Williams, J. (2003), “The importance of HR practices and workplace trust in achieving superior performance: a study of public-sector organizations”, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 28-54.
Graupmann, V., Jonas, E., Meier, E., Hawelka, S., Aichhorn, M. (2012), “Reactance, the self, and its group: When threats to freedom come from the ingroup versus the outgroup”, European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 164-173.
Guest, D. E. (2004). “The Psychology of the employment relationship: An analysis based on the psychological contract”, Applied Psychology, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 541-555.
Holland, P. J., Cooper, B., Hecker, R. (2015), “Electronic monitoring and surveillance in the workplace: The effects on trust in management, and the moderating role of occupational type”, Personnel Review, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp.161-175.
IBM (2006), “Stopping insider attacks: How organizations can protect their sensitive information”, available at: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/imc/pdf/gsw00316-usen-00-insider-threats-wp.pdf (16 August 2018).
Innocenti, L., Pilati, M., Peluso, A.M. (2011), “Trust as moderator in the relationship between HRM practices and employee attitudes”, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 303-317.
Jensen, J. M., Raver, J. L. (2012), “When self-management and surveillance collide: Consequences for employees’ trust, autonomy, and discretionary behaviors”, Group & Organization Management, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 308-346.
Kepes, S., Delery, J. E. (2007), “HRM systems and the problem of internal fit”, in Boxall, P., Purcell, J., Wright, P. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, pp. 385-404.
Kim, H. W., Kankanhalli, A. (2009), “Investigating user resistance to information systems implementation: A status quo bias perspective”, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 567-582.
Lane, F. S. (2003), The naked employee: How technology is compromising workplace privacy, AMACOM, New York, NY.
Laudon, K. C., Laudon, J. P. (2001), Essentials of management information systems: Organisation and technology in the networked enterprise, 4th edition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Li, Y. (2012), “Theories in online information privacy research: A critical view and an integrated framework”, Decision Support Systems, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 471-481.
Martin, A. J., Wellen, J. M., Grimmer, M. R. (2016), “An eye on your work: How empowerment affects the relationship between electronic surveillance and counterproductive work behaviours”, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 27, No. 21, pp. 2635-2651.
Marx, G., Sherizen, S. (1991), “Monitoring on the job: How to protect privacy as well as property”, in Forester, T. (Ed.), Computers in the human context: Information technology, productivity, and people, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 397-406.
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. D., Schoorman, F. D. (1995), “An integrative model of organisational trust”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 709-734.
Morrison, E. W., Robinson, S. L. (1997), “When employees feel betrayed: A model of how psychological contract violation develops”, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 226-256.
Nord, G. D., McCubbins, T. F., Horn Nord, J. (2006), “E-monitoring in the workplace: Privacy, legislation, and surveillance software”, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 49, No. 8, pp. 73-77.
Nichols, T., Danford, A., Tasiran, A. (2009), “Trust, employer exposure and the employment relations”, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 241-265.
Nussbaum, K., DuRivage, V. (1986), “Computer monitoring: Mismanagement by remote control”, Business and Society Review, Vol. 56, pp. 16-29.
Petronio, S. (2002), Boundaries of Privacy: Dialectics of Disclosure, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Prakhaber, P. R. (2000), “Who owns the online consumer?”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 158-171.
Robinson, S. L., Bennett, R. J. (1997), Workplace deviance: Its definition, its manifestations, and its causes, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT.
Rodgers, R. (1975). “A Protection Motivation Theory of Fear Appeals and Attitude Change”, The Journal of Psychology – Interdisiplinary and Applied, Vol. 91, No. 1, pp. 93-114.
Rousseau, D., Sitkin, S., Burt, R., Camerer, C. (1998), “Not so different after all: a cross- discipline view of trust”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 393-404.
Searle, R., Den Hartog, D.N., Weibel, A., Gillespie, N., Six, F., Hatzakis, T., Skinner, D. (2011), “Trust in the employer: the role of high-involvement work practices and procedural justice in European organizations”, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 22, No. 5, pp. 1069-1092.
Selmi, M. (2006). “Privacy for the working class: Public work and private lives”, Louisiana Law Review, Vol. 66, pp. 1035-1056.
Semuels, A. (2013), “Monitoring up- ends balance of power at workplace some say”, Los Angeles Times, available at: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-apr-08-la-fi-mo-monitoring-upends-balance-of-power-at-workplace-20130408-story.html (04 April 2016).
Stanton, J. M. (2002), “Company profile of the frequent internet user: Web addict or happy employee?”, Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 55–59.
Stanton, J., Stam, K. (2003), “Information Technology, Privacy and Power within Organizations: A View from Boundary Theory and Social Exchange Perspectives”, Surveillance and Society, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 152-190.
Stanton, J., Stam, K. (2006), The Visible Employee: Using Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance to Protect Information Assets without Compromising Employee Privacy or Trust, Information Today, Inc., Medford, New Jersey.
Stanton, J. M., Weiss, E. M. (2000), “Electronic monitoring in their own words: An exploratory study of employees’ experiences with new types of surveillance”, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 423-440.
Tavani, H. T. (2004), Ethics and technology: Ethical issues in an age of information and communication technology, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK.
Taylor, P., Bain, P. (1999), “’An assembly line in the head’: Work and employee relations in the call centre”, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 101-117.
Tyler, T. (2003), “Trust within organisations”, Personnel Review, Vol. 32, No. 5, pp. 556-568.
