Search results

Efficiency wage theory predicts that firms can induce worker effort by the carrot of high wages and/or the stick of monitoring worker performance. Another option available to firms is to tilt the remuneration package over time such that the lure of high future earnings acts as a deterrent to current shirking. On the assumption that firms strive for the optimal trade-off between these various instruments, we develop a two-period model of efficiency wages in which increased monitoring attenuates the gradient of the wage-tenure profile. Our empirical analysis, using two cross sections of matched employer-employee British data, provides robust support for this prediction.

We present a model of organizational monitoring that integrates organizational justice and information privacy. Specifically, we adopt the position that the formation of invasiveness and unfairness attitudes is a goal-driven process. We employ cybernetic control theory and identity theory to describe how monitoring systems affect one's ability to maintain a positive self-concept. Monitoring provides a particularly powerful cue that directs attention to self-awareness. People draw on fairness and privacy relevant cues inherent in monitoring systems and embedded in monitoring environments (e.g., justice climate) to evaluate their identities. Discrepancies between actual and desired personal and social identities create distress, motivating employees to engage in behavioral self-regulation to counteract potentially threatening monitoring systems. Organizational threats to personal identity goals lead to increased invasiveness attitudes and a commitment to protect and enhance the self. Threats to social identity lead to increased unfairness attitudes and lowered commitment to one's organization. Implications for theory and research on monitoring, justice, and privacy are discussed along with practical implications.

Spotlights on the conflict between employees and employers over electronic surveillance and the workplace. Stresses that between the help that advanced technology has aided firms and workers, has also come the feeling that employees’ rights of privacy have been invaded by employers’ constant monitoring. Comments on companies’ liabilities and confidential information, along with employees’ privacy and the effects of monitoring. Concludes that employers need to clearly define to what extent they intend to monitor the workforce.

More and more organizations have resorted to the employment of monitoring software to keep track of employees’ everyday performance and task completion. The current paper aims to outline the capabilities, pros and cons of monitoring for employees. Several recommendations for Human Resources (HR) professionals are outlined to inform best practice.

This paper summarizes recent literature and trends on electronic monitoring aimed at remote workers, focusing specifically on trends observed in the UK and the USA.

The number of pros and cons, as well as the resulting recommendations for HR professionals, outline how technology may aid – but also undermine – performance.

The summary of capabilities, pros and cons represents a snapshot of current monitoring practices. The recommendations will give readers an overview of all the aspects and factors that ought to be considered when monitoring software and related tools are selected.

This conceptual article outlines the known effects of employee monitoring on employees who are working remotely. Potential implications, as well as practitioner suggestions, are outlined to identify how practitioners can create more supportive employee experiences as well as apply these to workplace health management scenarios.

This overview is based on a selective and practically oriented review of articles that hitherto considered the health implications of remote workers being monitored electronically over the last two years. This overview is subsequently complemented by a discussion of more recent findings that outline the potential implications of monitoring for remote employees, employees' work experience and workplace health management.

Several practitioner-oriented suggestions are outlined that can pave the way to a more supportive employee experience for remote workers, who are monitored electronically by their employers. These include the various health and social interventions, greater managerial awareness about factors that influence well-being and more collaboration with health professionals to design interventions and new workplace policies. Organizations would also benefit from using audits and data analytics from monitoring tools to inform their interventions, while a rethink about work design, as well as organizational reviews of performance and working conditions further represent useful options to identify and set up the right conditions that foster both performance as well as employee well-being.

The article outlines practitioner-oriented suggestions that can directly and indirectly support employee well-being by recognizing the various factors that affect performance and experience.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the practical and legal complexities associated with tele-homeworking arrangements in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the study focusses on organisational practices and outcomes relating to the monitoring and surveillance of employees. Drawing on relevant UK legislation and illustrative case law examples, the study demonstrates the challenges and legal implications associated with tele-homeworking.

This study is based on a review of the literature and an examination of the EU and UK laws applicable to various employer and employee concerns that stem from tele-homeworking.

Tele-homeworking can be advantageous to both employers and employees, however, there are a number of growing concerns surrounding the monitoring of such workers. Developing technologies can act as a catalyst for legal disputes and the advances in workforce monitoring and surveillance reveal the complex challenges faced by both employers and employees. The indiscriminate monitoring of staff can result in claims of violations to the privacy rights of workers, breach of contract and discrimination claims. Several policy implications associated with monitoring tele-homeworkers surface from the analysis, including the need to ensure that any proposed surveillance is legitimate, proportionate and transparent.

The paper is beneficial in providing legal insights into the topical and continuing complexities associated with the monitoring of tele-homeworkers. The exogenous shock of COVID-19 has demanded the reorganisation of work. The extensive and developing capabilities that employers have at their disposal to engage in employee monitoring, give rise to a greater possibility of legal challenges by workers. The study serves to draw attention to various surveillance concerns and highlights the importance of employers undertaking an evaluation of their monitoring practices and complying with the legal framework.

The purpose of this research is to explain the influence of information security monitoring and other social learning factors on employees’ security assurance behaviour. Security assurance behaviour represents employees’ intentional and effortful actions aimed towards protecting information systems. The behaviour is highly desired as it tackles the human factor within the information security framework. The authors posited that security assurance behaviour is a learned behaviour that can be enhanced by the implementation of information security monitoring.

Theoretical framework underlying this study with six constructs, namely, subjective norm, outcome expectation, information security monitoring, information security policy, self-efficacy and perceived inconvenience, were identified as significant in determining employees’ security assurance behaviour (SAB). The influence of these constructs on SAB could be explained by social cognitive theory and is empirically supported by past studies. An online questionnaire survey as the main research instrument is adopted to elicit information on the six constructs tested in this study. Opinion from industry and academic expert panels on the relevance and face validity of the questionnaire were obtained prior to the survey administration.

Findings from this research indicate that organisations will benefit from information security monitoring by encouraging security behaviours that extend beyond the security policy. This study also demonstrates that employees tend to abandon security behaviour when the behaviour is perceived as inconvenient. Hence, organisations must find ways to reduce the perceived inconvenience using various security automation methods and specialised security training. Reducing perceived inconvenience is a challenge to information security practitioners.

There are some limitations in the existing work that could be addressed in future studies. One of them is the possible social desirability bias due to the self-reported measure adopted in the study. Even though the authors have made every effort possible to collect representative responses via anonymous survey, it is still possible that the respondents may not reveal true behaviour as good conduct is generally desired. This may lead to a bias towards favourable behaviour.

In general, the present research provides a number of significant insights and valuable information related to security assurance behaviour among employees. The major findings could assist security experts and organisations to develop better strategies and policies for information security protection. Findings of this research also indicate that organisations will benefit from information security monitoring by encouraging security behaviours that extend beyond the security policy.

In this research, the social cognitive learning theory is used to explain the influence of information security monitoring and other social learning factors on employees’ security assurance behaviour; the finding implies that monitoring emphases expected behaviours and helps to reinforce organisational norms. Monitoring may also accelerate learning when employees become strongly mindful of their behaviours. Hence, it is important for organisations to communicate the monitoring practices implemented, even more imperative whenever security monitoring employed is unobtrusive in nature. Nonetheless, care must be taken in this communication to avoid resentment and mistrust among employees.

This study is significant in a number of ways. First, this study highlights significant antecedents of security assurance behaviour, which helps organisations to assess their current practices, which may nurture or suppress information security. Second, using users’ perspective, this study provides recommendations pertaining to monitoring as a form of information security measure. Third, this study provides theoretical contribution to the existing information security literature via the application of the social cognitive learning theory.

This paper aims to explore Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled monitoring in a multi-national petrochemical organization in Qatar and finds that the technology does not negatively influence employee perceptions of fairness, challenging current propositions on monitoring and highlighting the emerging role of culture, competition and paradoxical leadership in moderating the relationship between IoT-enabled monitoring and perceptions of fairness.

The authors adopted qualitative research as the methodological premise to explore the relationship between IoT-enabled monitoring and perceptions of fairness. They collected data from an oil and gas organization in Qatar to test the validity of the proposed hypotheses.

While I0T-enabled monitoring was perceived as pervasive, tracking every move and recording conversations, the diffusion of the technology throughout Qatar desensitized employees who felt it was the new reality around workspaces. The following three important factors reshaped employees’ perceptions toward IoT-enabled monitoring: a culture that is driven by productivity and strongly adheres by policies and standards to reach set goals; a highly competitive job market; and a paradoxical leadership who balances between the competition and lucrative rewards.

The limitation of this research is that the authors conducted a case study in similar organizations within the oil and gas industry in the State of Qatar to refute the theory that electronic monitoring of employees in the workspace elicits perceptions of unfairness. Future research can conduct quantitative surveys of employee perceptions in different industries within different cultures to be able to generalize and evolve a universal theory.

The research findings shed light on the escalating pressure global competition exerts on employees that nervousness about pervasive monitoring systems is replaced with fear of job loss and analytics on monitoring data is welcomed as a means of readjusting behavior to meet performance expectations.

The case study is the first to highlight the desensitization of employees to monitoring and the increasing pressure competition plays in motivating them to exceed expectations.

In recent years, electronic performance monitoring (EPM) has increased dramatically. The managerial decision to implement an EPM system is important for it has significant implications for an organization. Even so, little attention has been paid by researchers to this decision. The present paper reviews the published research on EPM and identifies factors that probably impact this decision. A model is offered to help researchers identify relevant psychological and organizational variables that may impact the decision to implement an EPM system. Psychologically, issues of trust, privacy, social facilitation, justice beliefs and stress reactions must be considered. Organizationally, a firm's Human Resource strategy, organizational culture, and anticipated consequences of EPM (i.e., increasing performance, reducing theft) are also discussed.

Employee evaluation and monitoring have been common in America since colonial times. With industrialization, employers have implemented increasingly creative ways to monitor employees. For example, in the early part of this century, Ford Motor Company employed investigators to enter employees' homes to verify that employees were not overly drinking and that their homes were clean