The Techniques and Rationale of E-Surveillance Practices in Organizations

The conceptual paper entitled – “The Techniques and Rationale of e-Surveillance Practices in Organizations” elucidates some of the key ethical issues arising out of the use of surveillance technology in the workplace. Information age is steering the organizations towards increased use of online workforce. This has led to the extensive dependence on internet in the organizations. The advent of Web 2.0 applications have acted as facilitating factors for cyber loafing of online workforce. Since Web 2.0 applications induce interactive information sharing, interoperability and collaboration on the World Wide Web, employees are provoked to indulge in mailing, chatting, entering virtual world, social networking blogging, podcasting, Net-surfing, online trading and the like. This leads to loss of productivity and loss of work-time in organizations. To regulate such unethical practices of using organizational technology for employees' personal indulgences, most of the organizations across the globe have adopted work place surveillance systems to monitor erring employees with the help of surveillance devices and gadgets. Employees consider surveillance or monitoring system as intrusion into their privacy and unethical. They also claim that it is an indication of lack of trust in them. This paper discusses about some of the e-techniques used for employee surveillance in organizations and the rationale behind e-monitoring it