Potential Employees’ Ethical Perceptions Of Active Monitoring: The Dark Side Of Data Analytics

Keywords

Active monitoring; Data analytics; Employee monitoring; Employee surveillance; Ethics and IT

Abstract

Employees are increasingly monitored through integrated, data analytic-driven continuous (i.e., active) monitoring systems that analyze a wealth of data concerning their behaviors and actions. While use of these active monitoring systems has been advocated for improved performance measurement, increased productivity, and reduced costs, discussion has generally ignored the ethical implications of such monitoring as well as the impact on employees’ morale and views of the organization. This study investigates these issues through application of contractarian ethics in the experimental examination of employees’ beliefs and intentions based on organizational monitoring practices. In the first experiment, the level of monitoring and pay are varied to understand potential employees’ perspectives on organizational ethics, willingness to accept a job with an organization, and their likely job satisfaction. While pay may sway willingness to accept a job and even the level of satisfaction, pay does not affect potential employees’ ethical perceptions of the organization. Under high monitoring situations, potential employees consistently rate the ethics of the organization as poor. In a second experiment, four justifications that the literature suggests employers may provide for using employee monitoring are found to have no effect on employees’ views about the organization in a high monitoring environment.

Publication Date

1-1-2017

Publication Title

Journal of Information Systems

Volume

31

Issue

2

Number of Pages

107-124

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.2308/isys-51580

Socpus ID

85026411692 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85026411692

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