Electronic Surveillance in the Workplace

This chapter proposes a new way of coping with the problem of electronic surveillance, which is derived from Buddhist teaching. Many dominant Western ethical systems try to propose a set of rules that specify normative conditions under which matters can be judged as right or wrong. The chapter argues that such rule-based systems are in the end not totally effective in bringing about a condition where workers and managers work together in harmony without the need for one to be in constant vigilance of the other. This may not be conducive to optimal productivity in the long run. The chapter proposes that the Buddhist perspective offered here is more effective in promoting mutual trust and respect among all concerned parties, and describes a way toward dissolution of any need for surveillance in the first place.

Establishing Boundaries

This chapter examines workplace monitoring in Australia. Competing interests between those of employees and employers are outlined. Recent decisions by courts and tribunals in Australia are considered. Information technology or acceptable use policies that are part of the contract of employed are identified as a means of establishing boundaries. The relevant reports of both the New South Wales Law Reform Commission and the Victorian Law Reform Commission are also discussed. The idea that Commonwealth legislation could be enacted to simplify the process of establishing boundaries is noted. This activity should be viewed more generally as strengthening the protection of privacy in Australian law. Management and workers both have responsibilities in establishing boundaries with regard to workplace monitoring. Effective communication between employers and employees is an essential part for creating a culture of respect and trust within an organization.

The Ethics of Hacking and Computer Abuse

Organisations spend large sums of money to ensure that they are protected against the risks associated with external threats. The perceived threats against organisations are well known, and the losses can be quantifiable. The perceived threat considered here is that associated with hackers. Much is known about hackers, their rationale, and their ethical views. However, it is harder to quantify what computer abuse is and what the associated losses are. This chapter focuses on hackers, computer abuse, and ethical issues.

Universal Human Rights and Employee Privacy

This chapter discusses the monitoring of employee e-mail and Internet usage in the context of the international nature of most modern business. Its three main aims are: (1) to highlight the problems involved in discussing an essentially philosophical question within a legal framework, and thus to show that providing purely legal answers to an ethical question is an inadequate approach to the problem of privacy on the Internet; (2) to discuss and define what privacy in the medium of the Internet actually is; and (3) to apply a globally acceptable ethical approach of international human rights to the problem of privacy on the Internet, and thus to answer the question of what is and is not morally permissible in this area. It concludes that the monitoring of an employee’s e-mail and Internet usage is, in the vast majority of cases, an unjustified infringement of the employee’s right to privacy.

Beyond Privacy and Fairness Concerns

This chapter explores the possibility that electronic performance monitoring violates the basic psychological boundary between the employer and employee. Once this boundary has been violated, a host of negative implications are likely, ranging from dissatisfaction and stress to resistance and deviance. This chapter outlines research investigating the implications of electronic performance monitoring and discusses the potential consequences if organizations continue to opt for electronic methods of monitoring to maximize employee performance. Furthermore, it offers suggestions for future research and the practice of electronic performance monitoring in an effort to define the boundaries around its use and limit the negative consequences experienced by electronically monitored employees in organizations.

Workplace Surveillance

This chapter identifies factors that are encouraging the growth in the monitoring of employees at work and investigates the reasons for this growth. Technologies, both old and new, that are available for use in monitoring workers are described, and the advantages in the deployment of some of these technologies are compared. The various effects of monitoring on employees are considered, along with ways by which employees can protect themselves from undesirable effects.

Personal Autonomy and Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace

In this chapter we suggest a significant cause for concern about electronic surveillance in the workplace, namely the moral and political value of personal autonomy and the threat to personal autonomy posed by the use of electronic surveillance. We explore the significance of psychological aspects of personal autonomy (psychological autonomy, for short) and argue that individuals may be conceived of as having rights to psychological autonomy that extend to the workplace. We then argue that, in certain circumstances, electronic surveillance in the workplace may undermine psychological autonomy, thereby infringing upon workers’ rights to psychological autonomy.

Negotiating Workplace Surveillance

In this chapter, we explore the ways that employees at a large, corporate retail store consent to and challenge the in-store video surveillance system they confront in their workplace and how these negotiations are shaped by and incorporated into the workers local “idioculture”. Our analysis highlights several important themes, including how workers perceive the use of surveillance and how they respond to new surveillance technologies. We focus on how these aspects of worker idioculture are, in part, a product of what employees believe to be morally acceptable uses of technology and their experiences with the older system they had come to know. In addition, we examine the ways that employees negotiate around the edges of store surveillance and, in some cases, actually use the system to reinforce the idiocultural norms of the “productive worker”.

Loaded Metaphors

The main aim of this chapter is to analyse the contradictions among several verdicts in Spain about the legality of digital monitoring in the workplace, more specifically, the legal viability of reading workers’ e-mails. These contradictions arise mostly because of the use of two incompatible metaphors: e-mail as a company instrument and e-mail as a system to deliver letters. Nevertheless, the existence of these two metaphors is not mostly due to the judges’ lack of knowledge about digital media, but to political interests towards completely informating the workplace. If my analysis is correct, Spanish legal background does not allow the company instrument reading of the situation. E-mail as a letter is the only interpretation that should prevail.

Informed Consent and Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace

The use of electronic monitoring devices in the workplaces of the private sector of capitalist economies is considered from the vantage-point of the doctrine of informed consent, a doctrine that is understood, following Clarke (2001), to be the basis for a general analysis of consenting relations. It is argued that electronic monitoring in workplace situations where employee consent is possible is unacceptable without that consent. The consent-based argument developed is compared with arguments aimed at restricting the use of electronic monitoring in the workplace that are grounded in the values of privacy and autonomy. It is argued that, whereas a consent-based argument leads to the aforementioned decisive conclusion, arguments that are grounded in the values of privacy and autonomy do not lead to decisive conclusions that could be used to warrant restrictions on the use of contemporary electronic monitoring devices in the workplace.