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When Pervasive Becomes Invasive: Issues Surrounding e-Monitoring and Surveillance Technology

in the Modern Organisation

In March 2010, BBC News reported upon an overseas development in ubiquitous computing that

may have confirmed the worst fears of a British society to have already vehemently rejected the

government’s plans for a national ID card and had only in the previous year been described by the

Lords Committee as being in serious danger of becoming a ‘surveillance state’ (www.bbc.co.uk,

2009). The article (www.bbc.co.uk, 2010) referred to major Japanese mobile communications

company KDDI Corporation and their development of technology that could track the most specific

of bodily movements via the accelerometer supplied in modern ‘smart phones’. Information on

particular actions could then be relayed wirelessly back to a central location, where managers could

closely monitor the efficiency of employee performance, thus linking the ideals of Total

Management Control (e.g. Delbridge, Turnbull and Wilkinson, 1992) with those of a fully pervasive

technological society.

The application of increasingly complex location-aware technologies to organisations for the

purpose of monitoring employees should perhaps not come as a complete surprise. As Giddens

(1987) proposes: ‘Surveillance in the capitalist enterprise is key to management’ (175: cited in

Timmons 2003: 144). It is in this sense that Bain and Taylor (2000) suggest that close surveillance

essentially propagates a neo-Taylorist approach to optimising workforce productivity; a view shared

by Smith and Thompson (1998: 555): ‘...the shadow of Scientific Management continues to fall over

contemporary work organisation’. Just as low-trust employee-employer relationships and the

separation of the labour process from the skills of the workforce so central to Taylorism (e.g. Pruijt,

2000) have persisted as points of contention since the outset of the century, so too has the issue of

surveillance. Could it be that technologies such as Global Positioning Systems, keystroke analysis and

e-mail monitoring software are simply the modern day manifestations of the foreman on the factory

floor, overseeing and ensuring the workforce perform to optimum levels? As Hoffman, Hartman and

Rowe (2003) contest, employers have gathered information about their employees ever since the

dawn of the 20th Century.

The following essay examines and evaluates an apparent assumption throughout much of the

literature that e-monitoring and surveillance of employees within organisations is inherently

oppressive; with technology in this context effectively being used to enslave workers to their

employers. Seemingly central to this perspective is the metaphor of the ‘electronic panopticon’

(Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992) and the current paper will evaluate whether this is indeed a useful

allegory for examining the relationship between surveillance technology and employees. The

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potential effects of sustained e-monitoring on employees will be outlined and a particular focus will

be afforded to the Call Centre industry, which has received a relatively substantial amount of

attention in the past two decades. The essay will then examine the legal rights that employees hold

with regard to their privacy at work, followed by a conclusion considering where the focus of future

research might lay. First, however, the relationship between e-monitoring and surveillance

technology and the organisation is considered.

e-Monitoring, Surveillance Technology and the Organisation

There can be little doubt that the world of work has become truly global. Just as the development of

what Deleuze (1992: 6) would term as ‘simple machines’ sparked the Industrial Revolution of the

18th Century, the proliferation of computer, satellite and Internet technology has made

communication across the globe instantaneous to the extent that technology and economic

globalization are now ‘so intertwined that they may be indistinguishable [in the post-industrial

world]’ (Chapman, 2004: 445). Whilst it is beyond the scope of the current paper to give full

consideration to the topic of technological determinism, the trajectory of technological

advancement appears to be non-uniform and its relationship with the organisation, apparently

complex and paradoxical by nature:

‘Organisations, especially for-profit organisations, now play a curiously dual role in

promoting the unfettered acceleration of technology. They are simultaneously

technology’s most powerful driver and also its hogtied prisoner.’ (Leavitt, 2002: 126).

Sewell and Wilkinson (1992) contend that a further paradox exists, where modern developments in

managerial strategy has given rise to greater decentralisation of managerial authority and

responsibility for decision making whilst simultaneously generating greater levels of centralised

control and surveillance. Whether technological development has lead to greater centralisation or

decentralisation of organisations is a contentious issue (Dewett and Jones, 2001) but as Button,

Mason and Sharrock (2003) suggest, the disruptive potential of empowered employees in a

decentralised system is likely to lead to countervailing techniques of surveillance; namely, the

development of electronic monitoring and surveillance (EM/S: D’Urso, 2006) technology that can

ensure the actions of employees are fully focused on achieving the productive goals of the

organisation.

What is meant by the concepts of electronic, or ‘e-‘, monitoring and surveillance though? Nebeker

and Tatum (1993: 509 cited in D’Urso 2006: 283) define e-monitoring as ‘the use of electronic

instruments or devices such as radio, video and computer systems to collect, store, analyze, and

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report individual or group actions or performance’. D’Urso (2006: 289) contests that such monitoring

is classed as surveillance if it is used to uncover ‘specific wrongdoing’. Later in the essay, statistics

are presented that illustrate the extent to which organisations use advanced e-monitoring

technology for this very purpose, thus creating a range of privacy-related issues. As the example

provided at the outset of the essay illustrates, EM/S technology has now developed to such a degree

of pervasiveness that keystrokes, body movements and real-time instant messages can be tracked,

stored and analysed with relative ease.

A cursory search of the Internet reveals numerous companies dedicated to providing EM/S software

to organisations, and it appears that business is booming. In the US, Wakefield (2004) reports sales

of computer monitoring and surveillance software as increasing from around $139 million in 2001 to

a vastly inflated $622 million in 2006. One such example is Raytheon’s ‘SilentRunner’ monitoring

software, which can track almost any activity that occurs on an employee’s work network (Hoffman,

Hartman and Rowe, 2003). An Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey conducted by the

American Management Association (AMA, 2007) provides further support for the growth, indicating

that of 304 US-based companies, 45 percent track keystrokes and content and 43 percent store and

review files and monitor e-mail. Mello’s (2003) assertion that employee monitoring is on the rise

appears to be receiving significant support.

However, an important consideration appears to be in striking a careful balance between overstating

the perceived Orwellian-esque intentions of E-M/S technology and ignoring the issues altogether.

The case study of call centres discussed later should illustrate that the relationship between EM/S

technology, organisations and wider society is complex and that any conclusions making a binary

distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or ‘empowerment’ and ‘enslavement’ are likely to be

oversimplifying the matter. Whilst it seems important to consider that there may be valid

organisational arguments for an increase in employee surveillance, the populism of ‘dark side’

research has rendered the latter as having arguably greater appeal throughout the literature (e.g.

Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992; Fernie and Metcalf, 1998). One particularly salient instance of this has

been the application of the ‘electronic panopticon’ metaphor, which shall be discussed in the

following section.

The Electronic Panopticon

The ‘electronic panopticon’ (Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992; Botan, 1996) has been an oft-cited

metaphor throughout the last two decades of research, typically used to convey the notion of covert

surveillance and control through the use of technology. The roots of the concept stem from

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Foucault’s (1977) seminary ‘Discipline and Punish’ text, where he adapted Jeremy Bentham’s late

18th Century idea of a ‘panopticon’ prison design as a metaphor for surveillance throughout what

Foucault described as a ‘disciplinary society’. The underlying idea behind Bentham’s panopticon was

that as part of the prison’s layout, a central observation tower would be designed as such that

individual inmates would never be sure as to whether they were being subjected to the ‘carceral

gaze’ (e.g. Bain and Taylor, 2000) of their unseen jailors. Foucault (1977: 201) summarised the

concept as such: ‘the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its actions’.

Scholars such as Botan (1996) applied the concept to information technology in so much that the

panoptic potential of a technology refers to its capacity to facilitate the surveillance of a workforce.

It is perhaps easy to understand the appeal of the panoptic metaphor when considering the

relationship between EM/S technology and the organisation. For some, conflict and adversarialism –

concepts that are arguably inherent to the carceral system - form a salient characteristic of the

employee-employer relationship, particularly with regards to employee surveillance (Friedman and

Reed, 2007). For instance, a 2006 Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) survey

reported that perceptions of monitoring differed between employees and managers. Reported in

Friedman and Reed (2007), 34 percent of employees surveyed believed that monitoring revealed an

employer’s lack of trust in employees, whereas only two percent of managers listed lack of trust as a

motivation for monitoring them. Such differences in perception could, of course, lead to conflict.

There are a number of issues with the panoptic metaphor, however. First, whilst the analogy of the

carceral-disciplinary form of covert monitoring may hold some intuitive appeal, workplaces are ‘not

simply... site[s] of disciplinary power’ (Bain and Taylor, 2000: 5). Indeed, Bain and Taylor (2000: 5)

proceed to acknowledge the inherent flaw of the panoptic metaphor, in that:

‘The factory or office are not simply paler versions of carceral institutions ... [and] are not

functionally orientated towards the creation of obedient bodies per se but ... towards the

attainment of profit.’

Previously, Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) had criticised proponents, such as Sewell and Wilkinson

(1992), for overemphasising the metaphor and Timmons (2003) further supports this perspective by

concluding from his study of the surveillance of nursing practice that technological workplace

surveillance is far more complex than the application of the electronic panopticon metaphor would

suggest. Finally, Bain and Taylor (2000) point out that the concept of the ‘panoptic gaze’ is merely a

single element of Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power in modern society and is often cited as the

result of an overly superficial understanding of the Foucauldian framework.

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Resisting the seemingly popularist snare of the panoptic metaphor, Deleuze (1992) evolved

Foucault’s notion of the ‘disciplinary society’ to one that addresses the relationship between

modern day technology and the organisation. Eminantly quotable, in no small part due to his vivid

critique of the modern-day corporation (e.g. ‘We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is

the most terrifying news in the world.’ (1992: 5)), Deleuze proposed that following World War II, a

society of control, rather than discipline, has been set in place. For Deleuze (1992: 4), ‘in a society of

control, the corporation has replaced the factory, and the corporation is a spirit, a gas’. Further to

this, he notes, ‘In the corporate system... [we see] the progressive and dispersed installation of a

new system of domination’ (1992: 7). Whilst the concepts of ‘enslavement’ and ‘domination’ seem

familiar, instead of the panopticon we are presented with the notion of an ethereal organisation; a

corporation that is omniscient and concerned with control, much like the wider society within which

Deleuze proposes it is positioned.

Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance and the Impact on Individuals

Whilst the electronic panopticon metaphor has been subjected to some criticism, the notion of using

technology to enslave workers remains a fascinating one for many researchers. Perhaps one of the

great paradoxes of organisations investing heavily in e-monitoring and surveillance technologies is

that it seems to be used typically for maintaining and improving levels of productivity throughout

the workforce (e.g. Bain and Taylor, 2000) but as a number of studies have suggested, can lead to a

range of detrimental organisational, and by extension, societal outcomes. A consistent finding

appears to be that electronic monitoring and surveillance can lead to both psychological and

physical health issues for workers, from increased stress, anxiety and anger levels to increased

incidences of musculoskeletal disorders (e.g. Smith et al, 1992; Flanagan, 1994; Lee and Kleiner,

2003). In some instances, absenteeism and turnover rates increase as employees actively seek to

distance themselves from the stressful effects of constant e-monitoring (e.g. Levy, 1994), whereas

for workers who remain with the organisation, there may be decreases in quality of work (e.g. Grant,

Higgins and Irving, 1988) or overall levels of productivity due to diminished levels of trust in the

employer-employee relationship (e.g. Balitis, 1998).

Friedman and Reed (2007) discuss the potential importance of why employers should explain

carefully to employees exactly why it is that they are being monitored. In terms of psychological

theory, one area of interest is the employee’s perception of fairness with regard to the

organisation’s e-monitoring policy itself – termed ‘policy justice’ by Bies and Tyler (1993) - and to its

implementation, termed ‘procedural justice’ (Leventhal, 1980). A recent paper by Brown, Bemmels

and Barclay (2010) suggests that the independence of these two theories is important, which is an

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appealing argument if one considers that most employees explicitly consent to their organisation’s

‘fair use of IT’ policies at the outset of employment – perhaps creating high perceived levels of policy

justice – but may not necessarily agree with their practical application - associated with low

perceived levels of procedural justice. The relationship between workers and surveillance

technologies has been studied in a range of industries, but none more so than the area presented in

the following section.

The Call Centre Industry: a Case Study

Throughout the final decade of the 20th Century, industry experienced an ‘explosion in call centre

employment’ (Bain, Watson, Muvey, Taylor and Gall, 2001: 173), supporting its status as a dynamic

area of economic growth. One broad operational definition of a call centre is ‘…a dedicated

operation in which computer-utilising employees receive inbound – or make outbound telephone

calls...’ (Taylor and Bain, 1999: 102). Within this environment, Thompson (2003) describes how

‘Customer Service Operators’ can be expected to handle around 120 calls per day depending on the

particular organisational context, of which there are many ranging from retail to utilities services to

travel to Higher Educational institutions via Student Services support. In accordance with

Thompson’s (2003) description of the ‘rise of the call centre’, modern call centres find themselves no

longer considered as ‘additional functionality’ by organisations but fully integrated into centralised

customer service structures (Bain et al, 2001).

One of the key reasons why call centres are of such interest with regard to electronic monitoring and

surveillance is that there appears to be a ‘universal practice of monitoring employees’ (Bain et al,

2001: p.172), where important consideration for management includes not simply the quantity of

calls but the quality; the so-called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ aspects, respectively. Bain and colleagues (2001)

propose that surveillance thus plays an important role in maintaining standards throughout the

workforce, providing management with almost unprecedented control over target-setting and real-

time performance monitoring using readily available electronic monitoring software. As Thompson

(2003: 143) indicates, ‘surveillance plays a strong and distinctive role in the labour process’ within

call centres, reflecting ‘the latest phase in Taylorist developments’ (Bain et al, 2001: 173). As with

Taylorism and the related theory of ‘scientific management’ (e.g. Pruijt, 2000), call centres have

found themselves the focus of intense criticism from some academics and the wider media precisely

because of this combination of close and constant surveillance with often heavily scripted, paced

and repetitive tasks.

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Perhaps one of the wider, most prevailing images of the modern call centre is that of an ‘electronic

sweatshop’; a modern version of Blake’s ‘dark satanic mills’, representing sites of managerial

oppression, degradation and exploitation of privacy (e.g. Bain and Taylor, 2000; Thompson, 2003).

Infamous advocates of this perspective are Fernie and Metcalf (1998: 2), who analysed a small

number of case studies to conclude emphatically that:

‘The ‘tyranny of the assembly line’ is but a Sunday school picnic compared with the

control that management can exercise in computer telephony.’

This assertion attracted a great deal of criticism, most notably from Bain and Taylor (2000: 7), who

labelled Fernie and Metcalf’s (1998) likening of call centres to the often hazardous assembly lines of

the 1930s as ‘ill-informed’ and ‘absurd’. Furthermore, the authors were felt to have based their

conclusions on methodologically flawed case studies that did not appear to fit the previously

discussed panoptic metaphor that Fernie and Metcalf (1998: 9) declared had been ‘rendered

perfect’ through the monitoring of call centre employees.

Whilst Thompson (2003: 143) found it ‘hardly surprising’ that call centre work has garnered the

attention of Foucauldian-influenced critics, in their paper Bain and Taylor (2000) presented the case

study of a telecommunications call centre to illustrate a number of key issues with likening

electronic monitoring to the implied carceral gaze of panopticism. First, Bain and Taylor (2000) argue

that the ‘remote observations’ conducted by management in their case study rendered supervisory

power and control over the employee far from perfect. Despite the availability and use of

monitoring software, common problems facing management in the call centres continued to persist,

including absenteeism, turnover and motivation levels. Furthermore, more experienced Customer

Service Operators, or ‘agents’, were often able to guess when the supposedly covert remote

observations of their work were taking place simply from cues given by the managers; an event that

should not occur if the environment was truly rendered panoptic by the EM/S technology.

Second, Bain and Taylor (2000) admit that whilst the panoptic metaphor is appealing, it is ultimately

a case of technological determinism. That is, simply because vendors of EM/S technology may claim

to be able to closely monitor every action of the employee and strive to achieve the ideals of Total

Management Control, this is mostly likely far too simplistic, treating management strategy and

practice as a clear-cut endeavour and employees as passive victims. Indeed, an oft-cited

characteristic of panopticism is that it inherently denies the possibility of worker resistance, which a

number of studies have shown to be incorrect in relation to the use of EM/S technology, whether in

a call centre environment (e.g. Bain and Taylor, 2000) or alternatives, such as the print industry

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(Button et al, 2003) and nursing (Timmons, 2003). In all of these instances, employees were shown

to retain an element of individual and group control in their responses to the technology.

A further finding of the aforementioned cases of ‘resistance’ was that managerial practice was

typically found to be more flexible than the portrayal offered by the discipline-influenced notion of

the electronic panoption. For instance, Lankshear et al (2001) proposed that call centre employees

can pursue management-defined goals without necessarily following management demands to the

letter. This leads to a third point: that surveillance in itself may often not be the central reason for

why management monitor employee activity in call centres. As mentioned previously in this section,

call centre managers typically have a dual focus: the quantity and quality of ‘front line’ interaction.

Bain and Taylor (2000) demonstrated, remote observation of employee activity can be used for

disciplinary purposes, such as if the number or quality of calls fielded by operators are below the

requisite standard, but equally, the technology can also be used for productive, developmental

purposes. The panoptic metaphor implies that the relationship between employer and employee is

adversarial, which even in a Tayloristic call centre environment where there is likely to be clear

delineation between management and operator, it may not necessarily be the case. As Bain and

Taylor (2000: 8) point out:

‘Neither surveillance nor control mechanisms are ends in themselves but are the

consequence of the process of perpetual benchmarking by which call centres assess their

performance.’

In other words, control over the workforce may not be the primary focus for management within call

centres, but is arguably more important than the oppressive and omniscient organisational desires

for employee surveillance. We will now consider the issue of employee rights in the face of a rapidly

evolving workplace where affordances for individual privacy may not be quite what they seem.

Legal Rights, Ethical Wrongs?

Although UK-based statistics are relatively elusive, a number of US-based academic papers and

surveys have suggested that around three-quarters of employers record and potentially analyse the

e-mail messages, telephone calls, internet connections and computer files of their employees (AMA,

2007). As detailed previously, just over two-fifths of the companies in the AMA’s 2007 Electronic

Monitoring and Surveillance Survey specifically monitoring the e-mail of their workers, with this

representing the most frequently monitored workplace technology, followed by telephone

conversations (16 percent). This is most likely a result of the almost ubiquitous use of e-mail

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throughout modern-day organisations (e.g. Nord et al, 2006). Thus, Friedman and Reed’s (2007: 76)

assertion of the ‘erosion of workplace privacy’ appears to be an increasingly legitimate concern.

Whilst privacy may be of central concern to workers, unions and society in general, a potentially

more worrying trend is for employers to base disciplinary action and dismissals on data collected

from e-monitoring and surveillance. The aforementioned 2007 survey conducted by the AMA

indicated that more than 25 percent of organisations reported dismissing an employee for misusing

e-mail, with around one-third doing so for employees who abused the use of the internet. It is not

possible to know from this data how many cases were justifiable dismissals and how many were

cases of potentially overzealous surveillance, but one point appears to be becoming abundantly

clear: many workers seem unaware, or are perhaps ill-informed, of the extent to which their privacy

is protected when using their organisation’s IT networks.

In the UK, employers that choose to monitor their employees must adhere to numerous rules and

regulations, including the Human Rights Act (1998), the Data Protection Act (1998), the Regulation of

Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 (RIPA) and the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice)

(Interception of Communications) Regulations of 2000. Similarly, in the US, employees may be aware

of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA: 1986) and the Fourth Amendment: the right to

freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. However, as Nord et al (2006: 73) point out,

workers tend to expect the same privacy rights within the workplace that they experience at home

and that ultimately ‘employee privacy, long considered a basic right, is often taken for granted by

employees’.

Concern around the level of protection that the aforementioned UK and US governmental laws

afford employees in relation to electronic activity in the workplace have existed almost as long the

use of the systems themselves. For instance, Bockanic and Lynn (1995) had already begun to

consider US Constitutional Privacy Rights, and Common and Statutory Laws relating to the increasing

use of ‘electronic mail’ in the mid-1990s. Perhaps the most telling indictment of how little the

situation has changed is that many articles written on the subject over a decade later (e.g. Nord et

al, 2006; D’Urso, 2006; Friedman and Reed, 2007) refer to the same complexities and inadequacies

of the law – at least from the perspective of the employee – and ultimately draw the same

conclusion: e-monitoring laws almost always tend to favour the employer.

According to Nord et al (2006), most US citizens assume that they withhold a constitutional right to

privacy under the Fourth Amendment. There are issues with this, however. The Fourth Amendment

refers to state actions conducted by Federal government rather than at the organisational level.

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Thus, the amendment appears to be of little use to workers in private-sector organisations. Whilst

the case of Borse vs. Piece Goods Shop Inc. (1992) suggests that the Restatement (Second) of Torts

at 652B –the invasion of privacy as ‘intrusion into seclusion’ – might show some potential for privacy

protection (Nord et al, 2006), establishing that the intrusion is ‘highly offensive to the reasonable

individual’ appears to be difficult for most plaintiffs appealing against their former employers - at

least to date.

Whilst many governmental communication acts and regulations appear to provide the employee

with support and protection from violations of privacy, various loopholes exist for organisations to

exploit should they wish to do so. For instance, whilst electronic communications such as e-mail are

purported to fall under the ECPA, in reality the act offers little protection to employees for a couple

of reasons (e.g. Bockanic and Lynn, 1995). First, the ECPA contains an ‘ordinary course of business’

exemption, providing employers with latitude in monitoring any electronic communications deemed

as work-related activity. For instance, in the case of McLaren vs. Microsoft (1999), the former was

the focus of a harassment investigation and as his employers at the time, Microsoft decrypted

McLaren’s password to a personal folder within his work e-mail account and terminated his

employment based on the information contained therein. Whilst McLaren argued that his password-

protected folder was essentially the same as a physical, locked storage locker and that Microsoft’s

intervention was tantamount to an invasion of privacy, the courts rejected this argument on the

basis that the e-mails had first been received in the general mailbox and then moved across to the

personal folder, thus making them the business of the employer.

Second, even prior agreements of e-mail confidentiality between employee and employer do not

necessarily hold up in the courts. Smyth vs The Pillsbury Company (1996) is a landmark case where

Smyth sent e-mails to his supervisor from his home computer that contained comments deemed to

be inappropriate and unprofessional, which were then accessed at a later date by the employer and

Smyth’s contract was terminated. The court dismissed Smyth’s appeal, stating, ‘Once [the] plaintiff

communicated the alleged unprofessional comments to a second person (his supervisor) over an e-

mail system which was apparently utilized by the entire company, any reasonable expectation of

privacy was lost.’ Despite whatever assurances that employees feel they are provided with in

protecting the privacy of their electronic communications, cases such as the above highlight that the

documents often signed by employees at the outset of their employment, such as IT-based ‘fair use’

agreement policies, provide employers with significant latitude.

A point of potentially greater concern for employees, however, is a question first posited by the

Roman poet Juvat (e.g. Winstedt, 1899): ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodies’. Roughly translated as ‘who

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watches the watchmen?’ or perhaps more appropriately ‘who monitors the e-monitors?’ there is

evidence to suggest that company policies have not developed as rapidly as the implementation of

e-monitoring technologies themselves. According to a survey of over one hundred US-based

organisations conducted by Hoffman and colleagues (2003), around one-quarter admitted that they

did not have any procedures or safeguards in place to ensure that their e-monitoring process was

not abused, and over half reported the absence of any written guidelines, policies or procedures for

e-monitoring guidance. Whilst it is not the intention of the current essay to suggest that

organisations actively seek to exploit the data collected from e-monitoring their employees, the

evidence from just the previously described cases should be enough to emphasise that employee

rights to privacy are already far from clear, without lacking further clarity over how data is handled

within organisations. As Hoffman et al (2003) attest, technological growth only remains responsible

if ethical values are maintained and developed accordingly.

A further ethically contentious issue is the surveillance of electronic communications by workers

using their own private, non-work e-mail accounts, social networks or blogs in their own time, but

on company-owned property, such as laptops. According to the AMA (2007), around 12 percent of

US-based companies monitor the personal blog postings s of their employees to check whether they

are writing about the organisation; a statistic that may be of potential concern given the apparent

increase in the use of social media. For instance, a Princeton University-based survey reported by

the UK’s Guardian website in 2009 (www.guardian.co.uk, 2009) suggests that Facebook had at the

time of publication over 300 million active users, producing 45 million status updates a day, and

other micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter support a user-base of around 100 million people.

The UK’s Trade Unions Congress (TUC) were relatively proactive in issuing a briefing to members

entitled ‘Facing up to Facebook’ (2007: 2), warning that ignoring the growing use of social

networking sites within working hours is an ‘HR accident waiting to happen’. Whilst the rise of social

media presents new issues with regards to e-monitoring in the employee-employer relationship, it is

perhaps important to emphasise that the monitoring of non-work employee activity is by no means

a new issue; for instance, Hoffman et al (2003) describe how at the turn of the 20th Century, both

Herscheys and the Ford Motor Company committed significant resources to monitoring the conduct

of workers away from the factory floor. Whilst examples such as Ford’s Sociological Department

might seem abhorrent to the modern day worker, if we consider social media to be a kind of

‘informal’ e-monitoring and surveillance tool available to the employer, perhaps little has changed.

Consideration must be provided to the perspective of the employer too, however. As Friedman and

Reed (2007) contest, there may be several legitimate reasons for employers to monitor their

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employees’ e-mail or electronic use, ranging from the protection of trade secrets in an increasingly

competitive global market, to concerns over workforce productivity, and to avoid liability from

potential misuse. According to Crimmins (2001), around 10 percent of US companies have received

subpoenas relating to employee e-mails. If organisations are to be held accountable in the eyes of

the law for the digital actions of their employees, e-monitoring could be a justified approach from

the organisation’s perspective; particularly if employees have provided informed consent of ‘fair’

usage policy at the outset of employment. The case of Booker vs. GTE Net (Verizon) (2003)

illustrates that vicarious liability may well become a pressing concern to organisations if an

employee is deemed to be furthering the ‘employer’s interests’ through malicious e-mails or

alternative electronic communication. In this instance, Verizon escaped litigation because their

interests were not deemed to have been furthered, but as Friedman and Reed (2007) warn, other

organisations may not be so lucky in the future.

Conclusion

As illustrated by the example presented at the very outset of this essay, ongoing developments in

technology can fan the flames of an ever-increasing concern that organisations, and the wider

society in which they are positioned, are becoming characterised by pervasive electronic monitoring

and surveillance. In short, technological development may have arrived at a point where pervasive

has become synonymous with invasive. From a Foucauldian and Deleuzian perspective, there is a

philosophical argument that organisational life is an inherent component of a wider culture of

surveillance and control, although many scholars have wrestled with the analogy of surveillance

technology as a kind of electronic panopticon. Much like society, organisations and the management

structures, policies and relationships that lay within are hugely complex and the use of technology

for monitoring and surveillance purposes can vary significantly; a point emphasised by the case

study of call centre research, where e-monitoring has been used to both coach and discipline

workers. So, whilst the panoptic metaphor is alluring, in all likelihood it is probably too simplistic to

fully explain the range of issues that are intrinsic to the application of electronic monitoring and

surveillance systems.

What appears to be increasingly clear is the paradox of organisations investing in such technologies

with the aim of maintaining or increasing managerial control, but experiencing reduced control

through various detrimental outcomes, such as increased stress, absenteeism and attenuated

productivity. Furthermore, workers would appear to be justified in expressing concern over their

rights to privacy in the workplace. Presently, laws and regulations in both the UK and the US offer

some protection to individuals, but in practice, seem to favour the employer through the inclusion of

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various legal loopholes. This is not to deny the number of legitimate reasons for why an organisation

might choose to use surveillance technology to monitor its workforce, and even require its

protection, but current laws would appear to be ambiguous at best.

With the continuous rise of social media and the variety of ways in which contemporary

organisations can informally monitor the behaviour of their employees both in and outside of work,

it would seem that greater clarity with regards to regulating e-monitoring and surveillance activity is

required urgently, for the sake of both employees and employers alike. Whilst changes in law could

be cumbersome and unwieldy to implement, one proactive step might be for organisations to

encourage the involvement of their employees in creating fair organisation-specific e-monitoring

policies that explain with clarity why it is that they are being monitored and how the data will be

used. Ignorance can be no excuse for the organisation that denies the legal and ethical challenges

that lay ahead or similarly, for the worker who assumes the same affordances of privacy in

workplace as at home. It is in this sense that organisational research may serve to provide a useful

model for how wider society can address the rise of electronic monitoring and surveillance

technology and its impact on privacy rights.

Word Count: 5, 491

Candidate: 4148215

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References

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