electronic surveillance and the forgotten impacts...
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Global Journal of Contemporary Research in Accounting, Auditing and Business Ethics (GJCRA)
An Online International Research Journal (ISSN: 2311-3162)
2017 Vol: 3 Issue: 1
543 www.globalbizresearch.org
Electronic Surveillance and the Forgotten Impacts on Organizational
Employees in India: A Qualitative and Ethical Review
Jijo James Indiparambil,
Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies,
KU Leuven, Belgium.
E-mail: [email protected]
___________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
Supervision of employees has been a fundamental aspect of any employment relationship for
centuries. The implementation of advanced ICTs in the workplace combined with its user-
friendly nature and diminished costs, has created a substantial leap in the availability and
intensity of monitoring practices in the workplace today. Being an important venue for
emerging service sectors including financial accounting, call centres, and business process
outsourcing Indian organizational workplaces provide for the extensive use of electronic
surveillance practices and thus causes for individual and social impacts for better or worse.
The researchers have not given enough attention to workplace surveillance in Indian context
and that not definitively from employees’ perspectives and with ethical frameworks. This
study plugs this gap and contribute to the broad research scholarship by qualitatively
(empirical) exploring the forgotten bearings of electronic surveillance on the organizational
(IT, ITeS, BPO) employees in India. It argues with a phenomenographic approach that the
expected benefits engendered by surveillance practices cannot overrule the individual, socio-
ethical and organizational concerns of employees heightened by them. It presents an overview
of employee perspectives in Indian context, methodologically reviews literature to
substantiate the employee experiences, synthesizes the result-findings, describes a heuristic
framework that organizes research on employee reactions to electronic monitoring and
concludes with notes of limitations and offering ideas for future research.
___________________________________________________________________________
Key Words: Surveillance, Privacy, Workplace, Work-Culture, Security, Self-Monitoring
Global Journal of Contemporary Research in Accounting, Auditing and Business Ethics (GJCRA)
An Online International Research Journal (ISSN: 2311-3162)
2017 Vol: 3 Issue: 1
544 www.globalbizresearch.org
1. Introduction
Though workplace surveillance is a global phenomenon, not restricted to an organization,
sector, society, region, or country, it has boundless ramifications, in both micro (motivation,
competence, motivation) and macro (organizations or sectors) levels, on the cultural or
environmental backgrounds and contexts of a given time and space (Cantor, 2016; Pitesa,
2012; Weckert, 2005; Lyon, 2003, 2001; Mishra and Crapton, 1998). A qualitative study on
electronic surveillance in the workplace was conducted in Indian context, because, being an
important venue for emerging service sectors including financial accounting, call centres, and
business process outsourcing Indian organizational workplaces provide for the extensive use
of electronic surveillance practices and thus causes for individual and social impacts in both
ways – good or bad. The researchers have not given enough attention to workplace
surveillance in Indian context and that not definitively from employees’ perspectives and with
ethical frameworks. This study plugs this gap and contribute to the broad research scholarship
in this matter. The socio-cultural and economic backgrounds and the present scenario of IT,
ITeS, BPO affluence in Indian work culture extend the significance and urgency of this
investigative exploration. All participants in the study were already subjected to several
surveillance practices in their present or previous workplaces ranging from CCTV cameras, e-
mails and telephone monitoring, biometric identification, and control through GPS and RFID,
and that contribute to the validity and reliability of the study. This research, hence, presents an
overview of employee perspectives in Indian context, methodologically reviews literature to
substantiate the employee experiences, and thus describes a heuristic framework that
organizes research on employee reactions to electronic monitoring.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Organizational Work Culture and Transformation in India
Culture in general is a complex whole that makes any society with specific ways how its
members think, act and live, and thus is termed as the ‘way of life’ of a particular segment or
group – small or big. The business work culture in India is contingent to a large extent on its
cultural and ethnic gages with geographical features and settlements, traditional trade
practices and present foreign investments leading to progressing business environments and
the craving for the adaptation of changing science and technology in the work scenarios
(Indiparambil 2017; Jhunjhunwala, 2012). This is particularized through the cultural
complexities with the diversity in language, customs and festivals, and tolerance and
acceptance of emerging business or market trends (Jhunjhunwala, 2012). Though Commercial
cities like Harappa and Mohenjedaro in the fourth and third millennium BCE and the ruins of
Indus Valley civilization of 2500 BCE prove the presence of India as an exporter in industrial
business since the ancient times (Kanagasabapathi, 2009; Agarwala, 2001), there was an
Global Journal of Contemporary Research in Accounting, Auditing and Business Ethics (GJCRA)
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interruption in its progress and only in the last 150 years India resumed her glory of being in
the path of industrialization (Majumdar 2012). For, being overpoweringly rural and
agricultural with 85 per cent of population living in villages deriving livelihood from
agricultural pursuits using outmoded low productivity techniques, Indian economy at the time
of independence drastically drained (Kapila 2003). Besides, the industrial sector was
underdeveloped due to the exploiting and destroying policy of the British Raj, weak
infrastructure, etc. (Kapila 2003).
The second half of the twentieth century witnessed subtle change ranging from socio-
cultural upgrading, political integrations, and economic growth in India. For, in the
continuation of these cultural milieus a new middle class (labour) is emerged in the 1990s as a
cultural sub-group that made a leading role in the modernization process in India and featured
its socio-economic and political developments (Arora 2005). India witnessed a sweeping
revolution from predominantly rural agriculture-based country to urban industrialized and to
the current Metropolitan Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based
knowledge-service country. Majumdar rightly observes and illustrates the changes and the
liberalization process initiated in India since the beginning of the 1990s, that prefigures new
developments in the industrial and business scenario of the country, where business was
becoming global witnessing a new era of the entry of an increasing number of foreign
business sectors (Majumdar, 2012). Indian work culture in this context seems dualistic, where
a large traditional economy, i.e., agriculture, coexists with the economy of industry and
services that produces high level of growth and productivity. The rapid growth of
Multinational Companies (MNCs), ICT enabled sectors, Business Processing Outsourcing
(BPO) and Knowledge Processing Outsourcing (KPO) establishments along with other
globalized tendencies of business and work practices prove this pattern.
A substantial amount of attention is given in today’s service sector in India through the
performance of IT and the related software, outsourcing, and back office services (Majumdar,
2012). Similarly, globalization, with its increased “cross-border transactions in the production
and marketing of goods and services that facilitates firm relocation to low labour cost
countries” (Stone, 2008: 115), deserves the credit of creating an increasingly privileged and
extensively regarded opportunities of high-quality employment in developing countries like
India. The adaptation of the new emerging technologies, rapid market-oriented restructuring,
and globally competitive policies helped Indian economy to grow faster and to become more
self-reliant in its actions (Jain, 2004). However, India perceived great challenges in this
sudden shift of its work culture. Factors like privatization, flexibilization, and
individualization, coalesce the major labour trends and challenges in globalized IT-India
along with new labour management practices and approaches.
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Contemporary employee management patterns create further pertinent challenges
regarding the highly technology dependent agencies of work, especially those in the IT and
ITeS workplaces and those employing electronic surveillance. Though the specific parameters
of surveillance vary both in quantitative and qualitative level in relation to the organizational
differences, the performative and behavioural monitoring and the ubiquitous nature of its
applications are largely increasing in the Indian workplaces and particularly in those enabled
with ICT and are extensively mounting in its challenges (Indiparambil 2017; Noronha and
D’Cruz, 2009). The management ideology of monitoring practices is being criticized, that
“the availability of a technological capacity does not mean it will necessarily be deployed [...].
Managers may or may not be aware of the potential of technologies for monitoring, and if
they are aware, they will still weigh the benefits of implementing surveillance process against
the perceived costs and benefits to the organization” (Mason et al., 2002: 100).
Technology provides or functions only as a tool for data to be collected, analyzed and
interpreted (Moussa 2015). Yet, the continuous and easy monitoring through technological
viability makes and transforms ‘monitoring work’ to ‘surveillance of workers’ and demands a
plethora of transformed management. The current management principles are characterized
by the responsible individual employees driven by internal motivation and competition,
readiness for team work and collaboration, open and interactive work culture (Udupa, 2015).
Although remarkable is the present management ideology practiced by the Indian IT industry
“based on flat structures, lack of bureaucracy, openness, flexibility, and employee
empowerment,” some new forms of labour challenges or employee setbacks emerges due to
the volatile requirements of global standard business and its subsequent functional practice of
direct or ‘panoptical’ control over the workers and the work process (Upadhya and Vasavi,
2006). This practice is called ‘electronic panopticon’ by Graham Sewell and Barry Wilkinson
(1992: 283), “where a disembodied eye can overcome the constrains of architecture and space
to bring its disciplinary gaze to bear at the very heart of the labour process,” which has a
drilling effect on employees and becomes a new age challenge of Indian organizational
workplaces.
2.2 Concepts and Concerns of E-Surveillance in the Workplace
Surveillance is said to be an observation from a distance and certainly much more. It is a
well “focused, systematic and routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence,
management, protection or direction, and which directs its attention in the end to individuals”
(Lyon, 2007: 14). It is the fact or possibility of being observed by someone else (Ball 2010;
Beu and Buckley, 2001; Stahl et al., 2005). So, the word surveillance covers surreptitious
investigations both into individual activities and routine/everyday activities. Yet, because of
its intriguing and highly sensitive character, surveillance is very ambiguous in nature (Lyon,
Global Journal of Contemporary Research in Accounting, Auditing and Business Ethics (GJCRA)
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2007) and is called by Graham Sewell and James R. Barker (2006) a ‘double-edged sword,’
which carries baggage along with its benefits. Electronic surveillance, which is our main
concern here, is generally understood as the gathering of information by surreptitious, secret
and stealthy means using electronic devices. It is an inconspicuous observation of or snooping
on persons, places and activities using electronic devices such as cameras, microphones, tape
recorders, or wire-taps, and more intrudingly by monitoring of internet, email, and other web
activities. In the workplace, it refers to the intended activities of observation to collect and
record employees’ data and information, often done either in a systematic or an ad hoc way
by using electronic and other technological means (Ball 2014; Mitrou and Karyda, 2006).
The number of organizations engaged in one or another form of electronic employee
monitoring has been steadily increasing over the past three decades (Indiparambil 2017; Ball
2010; Spitzmüller and Stanton, 2006; Stanton and Weiss, 2000). The Center for Business
Ethics reports that, today, as many as 92% of all organizations electronically monitor and
track their employees in some form (Coultrup and Fountain, 2012). The multitude of devices
and approaches available today makes surveillance very easy to conduct inside the workplace
and makes it possible even to extend this monitoring outside the workplace, going beyond the
scope of the employment relationship. Among the common practices of workplace
surveillance, such as drug testing and biometric and electronic monitoring, today also
electronic surveillance practices are used to gather information by surreptitious, secret and
stealthy means and are of high concern because of their inexpensive and user-friendly nature.
Electronic surveillance, as analysed by Kizza and Ssanyu (2005) generally includes: audio
surveillance (phone-tapping, voice over internet protocol, listening devices, etc.); visual
surveillance (hidden video surveillance devices, body-worn video devices, CCTV, etc.);
tracking surveillance (global positioning systems/transponders, mobile phones, radio
frequency identification devices, biometric information technology, etc.); and data
surveillance (computer/internet, keystroke monitoring, etc.). These monitoring practices
generally fall either overt (the presence and applications of surveillance methods are made
known and the devices are visible) or covert (nothing is revealed to the worker) category
(Nevogt, 2015). Both have challenging repercussions in the life of employees.
Surveillance is also said to be a task-oriented behaviour that enables employers to obtain
information about employee performance (Niehoff and Moorman, 1993; Ball 2010). As such,
surveillance seems quite positive insofar as it can increase performance and productivity. For,
surveillance is regarded as a management technique useful in ensuring quality service and
increased productivity and guaranteeing protection from theft, legal liabilities and over
expenditures due to fraud, dishonesty, or misconduct (Allen et al., 2007; Findlay and
McKinlay, 2003; Miller and Weckert, 2000). For instance, software filters used in computers
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restrict online shopping and the use of social networks during work hours. A GPS device in a
vehicle, in the same way, allows dispatchers to give specific location directions to the drivers.
Systems of surveillance track employees’ positions in time and space and expose employees
who are ‘working hard’ and those who are ‘not pulling their weight’ (Sewell and Barker,
2006). Monitoring employee internet use ensures that employees use it only for employment
related activities. It also obstructs external encroachment by way of data transactions and
blocks the sensitive, confidential and sometimes dangerous information being received or sent
outside of the company (Mujtaba, 2003). Monitoring employee phone calls gives insight into
how employees interact with their colleagues.
A study conducted by Allen et al. regarding workplace surveillance reveals that 68% of
respondents feel that the surveillance is beneficial, while 17% gave a mixed reaction, 10%
appeared ambivalent and 6% were sad. However, among those who indicated surveillance as
beneficial or necessary, 74% are managers while only 56% are non-managers (Allen et al.,
2007). This means that, from a management perspective, employee monitoring is needed to
sustain a competitive and productive workplace. Although the obvious beneficiary of
employee monitoring is the employer/management, since monitoring complies with set
policies and improves quality and performance, it also can be quite useful to employees as it
motivates them to do their jobs more effectively and make them feel accountable in their
work. For, the data collected through monitoring is increasingly used to coach employees for
better and more accurate performance and behaviour in the workplace (Miller and Weckert,
2000; DeTienne, 1993). Along with improving work practices, it enables companies to “get
rid of ‘dead wood’, workers who are not doing their fair share of the work” (Miller and
Weckert, 2000). According to Michale Smith and Benjamin C. Amick (1990: 285),
“monitoring, and its related motivational process such as feedback, goal setting and
performance evaluation, are keys to the success of electronic workplace enhancement.” It
leads to more objective and fact-based feedback and performance appraisal. Effective
monitoring thus provides effective feedback and improved performance. In addition,
providing an unbiased evaluation and preventing emotional break ups is said to be another
major advantage of electronic monitoring (Miller and Weckert, 2000). It also marks the
accuracy of the information collected and the generality of the system commonly used to
gather data.
Electronic monitoring systems allow businesses to have good transactions, avoid
mortgages and liabilities, conduct needed investigations and interactions, and help to ensure
their success in a competitive global environment. Julie A. Flanagan (1994: 1260-1262)
opines that computer-based monitoring can “chart future workloads to increase productivity
[...] reduces the need for managers to give personal attention to employees because computer
Global Journal of Contemporary Research in Accounting, Auditing and Business Ethics (GJCRA)
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can provide feedback [...] and can improve compliance with company policies and safety
guidelines.” In studying employee behaviour as a psychological scientist, Devasheesh P.
Bhave (2014), found an association of high performance with employee monitoring and
writes that workers monitored more frequently perform better than unmonitored workers.
Nevertheless, he continues that “although the results of this study indicate a positive
association between supervisory use of Electronic Performance Monitoring and employee
performance dimensions, excessively high levels of [... its] use may be detrimental to
employee performance on account of fairness and autonomy concerns” (Bhave, 2014: 629).
Niehoff and Moorman (1993: 528), referring to the taxonomy of work-related supervisory
behaviours developed by Komaki and others (1986), categorize and separate supervision or
monitoring into: “(1) performance antecedents (instruction, clarifying work), (2) performance
monitors, and (3) performance consequences (evaluation, giving rewards).” Although their
analysis finds that employees who were monitored more were more successful than those who
were monitored less, they also find, alarmingly, among those who were monitored more, a
direct decrease in organizational citizenship behaviour, “defined as extra-role behaviour that
is discretionary and not explicitly related to the formal reward system of an organization but
is conducive to its effective functioning” (Zhu, 2013: 23). Though management espouses
empowerment and job enlargement, others claim that the process of surveillance reduces
employees “to being cogs in a machine like the old-fashioned assembly line” (Piturro, 1989:
32). The diverse dynamics of both traditional and current surveillance practices can be
illustrated by the following observation, which will help to understand the complexities that
the workforce faces in present day technocratic culture.
2.3 Traditional versus Contemporary Electronic (& Cyber) Surveillance
Traditionally, for instance, employers used to monitor the time of arrival and departure of
employees by simple observation, and what any particular employee does at any given time
by informal visits. Today, different timings related to employees’ presence on work premises
are recorded automatically and produce objective data about them (Fairweather, 1999). What
is new in these newer surveillance practices is that surveillance now progressively depends
more on information and communication technologies. Today, almost all jobs, and some jobs
more intensely than others, are subjected or have the potential to be subjected to several types
of electronic or other surveillance practices (Vorvoreanu and Baton, 2000). This tendency of
using and applying increasingly marked surveillance practices intensified after the 1960s and
has been enabled by the large-scale computerization of the workplace. This is even marked by
the shift in the nature of work and the society at large, for example in the move from
agricultural work to an industrial-manufacturing society, and to today’s knowledge-based
information and communication-related work culture. The knowledge and the control that
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workers have formerly possessed over their work is now removed from them and is organized
and overseen scientifically by the manager.
Likewise, managers were traditionally not able to attend to and monitor all workers, as the
proportion of time given to it was comparatively less than that given to their other
responsibilities. However, Roland E. Kidwell Jr. and Nathan Bennett (1994) observe that
unlike traditional practices, monitoring with electronic and other modern (cyber) devices and
methods allow constant and immediate surveillance with an instant control of employee
behaviour. Jeffrey Stanton (2000: 130) also stresses this idea, saying, “electronic monitoring
can occur continuously, can measure multiple employees simultaneously, and can record
voluminous data especially on quantitative dimensions of work performance, [whereas]
traditional supervisory monitoring usually relies upon the inconstant presence of a human
observer with the many known limitations of perceptual processing and memory.” Moreover,
a digital sentinel, a ‘Big Brother,’ is always there, working with everyone as unchecked
surveillance exacerbates and continues (Wen and Gershuny, 2005). We can thus say that
computer-based surveillance is both increasingly powerful and impersonal yet also
decreasingly visible and anonymous (Zirkle and Staples, 2005). Analyzing the cost per unit of
data surveilled, the traditional methods are more expensive than new ways and means applied
in the same situation, as the traditional methods often require a separate action while the
newer methods are merged with routine activity.
It is also said that in both traditional and contemporary electronic or cyber surveillance
practices, monitoring “can occur regularly or intermittently, can be expected or unexpected,
[and] can occur with or without employee acceptance or permission” (Stanton,2000: 131).
However, the so-called characteristics of fair procedures of monitoring, such as consistency,
accuracy, control and justification may differ between both traditional and electronic or
cyber-monitoring environments (Stanton, 2000). For instance, to summarize, traditional
practices tend to entail face-to-face control, complete disclosure of the doer’s identity,
monitoring limited mainly to working hours alone, experiencing home (outside work
premises) as a safe haven, explicit visibility of the effect on the victim, and having little in the
way of an audience. In contrast, the present electronic or online (cyber) surveillance practices
are characterized by their mechanical nature (with electronic devices), the anonymity of the
perpetrator, continuous and extensive occurrences (24/7 through GPS – and no escape), the
invisibility of effects, an unlimited audience, and a hasty and viral reach Therefore, although
employee monitoring is not a new phenomenon, the possibility of doing it without human
intervention or interruption is relatively new, and it permits “remote access and fast
dissemination of information” (Eivazi, 2011) and offers remarkable speed in processing and
assorted opportunities in application, saving both cost and time.
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One of the advantages of ‘new’ surveillance practices is their ability, on the one hand, to
carry out the monitoring from ‘afar’ over the ‘close’ observation of the ‘traditional’ practices,
and on the other hand, to go beyond the sensual perception and “see through” people and
situations. The disproportionate availability of technology, which was only available to the
elite in the past, is today widely accessible and easy to use. It is the same with the process of
data analysis (Marx, 2002): present surveillance practices have greater capacity and data is
much easier to organize, store, retrieve, analyze, and communicate (send and receive). In sum,
surveillance is nothing new in itself, but its nature is changing and present means of
surveillance, though they have not entirely replaced more traditional methods, have certainly
supplemented them in very transformative ways.
2.4 Indian Circumstantial Rationale behind the Workplace Surveillance
As it is globally experienced, the emergence and adaptation of sophisticated monitoring
technologies with invariably affordable price increased the employee surveillance in the
Indian organizations as well. Apart from these purposes of measuring and improving
performance, preventing theft and other risk factors, and ensuring the proper adherence to the
rules and policies of the workplace, there are few particular reasons for its implementation in
Indian organizational context basing on her socio-cultural and economic scenarios.
The Quality Management is said to be the prime cause for surveillance in Indian
organizations (Batt et al., 2005). Steadily walking over the modern attributes and challenges
due to the changed policies of globalization, liberalization, and privatization, Indian
organizations now participate in a quality race with regard to its products and services. The
quality is now redefined in the Indian organizations extending client and consumer
satisfaction and redesigning products and services (Kumar et al., 2009). The quality processes
of products or services from India introduce, apart from anticipated benefits, increased and
new forms of surveillance, that “in apparent contradiction to the official rhetoric of worker
initiative and autonomy” (Upadhya and Vasavi, 2006: 64). The quality assessing processes of
‘Just-In-Time’ (JIT) and ‘Total Quality Management’ (TQM) models, for instance,
predominantly enlarges the profit motive and goes aloft with the substantial increase of
surveillance practices. Just-in-Time is a strategy employed in the company to increase the
efficiency by the best utilization of the full capacity and to decrease inventory costs by
eliminating waste and receiving only the vital goods and thereby maximizing company’s
benefits and profit (Singh and Garg, 2011; Singh and Ahuja, 2015; Kumar, 2010). In the same
way, a complementary means to reach quality objective of a product or service is offered by
Total Quality Management. TQM involves the study of customers’ satisfaction, effective
participation of managements and employees, statistical quality control, communication
systems, and cost involvement etc. (Kumar et al., 2010; 2008).
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The adaptation of JIT and TQM is to improve the best use of available time and resources
and thus perk up the quality of products and services. The initiatives of JIT and TQM,
according to Monika Prasad (1998: 443), “were associated with intensification, job-loss,
increased monitoring and direct control and limited promotion opportunities.” Similarly,
quoting Sewell & Wilkinson (1992), she continues that in the Indian organizational context
these regimes of JIT and TQM “create and demand systems of surveillance which improve on
those of the traditional bureaucracy in instilling discipline and thereby consolidating central
control and making if more efficient” (Prasad 1998: 443). The application and practice of
intruding monitoring techniques to manage the quality conversely takes away the trust and
responsibility invested in them and enforces more rigid workplace control.
Concomitant with the above-mentioned quality management and the augmented
organizational effectiveness are the Technological Over-Dependency and its misuse at the
level of both individual employee and the management in Indian workplaces. The improper
use of technologies, for instance, has become a pervasive problem in the workplace causing
rigorous implications to the management and organizations by way of low productivity,
security breaches and liability and legal concerns (Ugrin et al., 2007). To explain it further,
Cyberslacking – misuse of time, resources, etc., for non-work purposes during working hours
(known also as cyberloafing or cyberbludging) – is extensively identified in Indian
organizational workplaces due to the easy use of internet and other technological
advancements (D’Cruz and Noronha, 2013). Similarly, Cyberbullying, as an all-
encompassing word to represent this misuse, is defined “as a behaviour that involves the use
of cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites such as
Facebook and Twitter to harass, threaten or intimidate or support deliberate, repeated, and
hostile behaviour by an individual or group intended to harm others” (Taiwo, 2015: 2979). It
is often done with a predictive and hypothetical speculation that no one knows the wrong
doings, which shows that the absence of a moral check increases the distraction among the
employees. Therefore, it is essential at this point from employers’ perspective to uncover the
dynamics of this growing issue in the Indian organizational workplace and to execute various
remedial or preventive measures. To this end and to eliminate the pressure and opportunities
monitoring mechanisms have been largely used in the Indian organizational work context.
The Performance Attributes of the Indian socio-cultural scenarios, which we have had
discussed, and its consequent workplace behavioural patterns seem to further necessitate the
need of monitoring in the Indian organizational workplaces. For example, Indian workers take
a cautious approach (non-committal) in many of the complex decision-making situations and
avoid, if any, till the assurance of a favorable outcome is guaranteed by a senior or in other
case totally depend on the superiors to decide for them (Khare, 2002). The low work-quality
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consciousness and easy postponing of delayed or incomplete work to the next day are quiet
normal in the Indian work contexts. Similarly, another rampant problem in organizational
workplaces in India is wasting time, and “coupled with dishonesty and bureaucracy, this issue
poses a formidable challenge to [...] business in India” (Khare, 2002: 131). To maintain an
expected performance in this situation, external monitoring is implemented. Likewise, the
precinct of commitment and priorities of Indian workforce, apart from the organizational
obligations, are widely linked to family, caste, religious adherence, political ideologies, etc.,
and these outside pressures largely cause to emanate the use of workplace resources to the
matters above the working process and relationships. To ward off these employees’
vulnerability and over emphasized concerns employers apply strict monitoring procedures.
The Power Control and Inequality in the contractual relationship (Krishnan et al., 2006)
between the employer and the employee in the organizational work context in India, which
has been a focal point of our discussion in the previous session, enables the superior agent to
monitor the inferior agent with or without his or her participatory consent. Surveillance in this
contextual scenario of power is perceived as misusing the vulnerability of the subordinate and
that “the organization that might have higher power in the contractual relationship is
infringing the employee’s [...] individual rights” (Krishnan et al., 2006: 4). It is seen also as a
part of keeping the technological decorum by imitating the Western model of management,
which invariably expresses a contractual power distance. To the same extent, the process of
subcontracting of work in the Indian organizations also leads to a high level of employee
monitoring as the organization wants to keep the performance metrics always far above the
ground. For, the contract enforcement as researchers like Batt et al. (2005) opine, is ensured
through extended and continuous monitoring practices, which articulate in turn its adherence
to performance metrics and place subcontractors under intense pressure to meet the same
efficiency goals and targets.
The Human Resource Profusions in India enhances the use of electronic and other
monitoring systems in the organizations. For, since India has an abundance of qualified labour
force, rigid surveillance practices allow the management to screen, select and retain honest
and suitable employees and, even in a filthy manner, to dismiss the poor performers to replace
with the skilled and the efficient (Krishnan et al., 2006). In this manner it also expresses an
economic reason behind the execution of monitoring technologies in the Indian workplaces.
For instance, a human supervisor is substituted with technological supervisor and constant
observation and controlling are exacerbated and intensified, which articulate not the scarcity
of human resource but merely the strategic economic agenda. The electronic monitoring
systems used here as only performance management technologies, which however, invariably
used by the client companies to regularly monitor the employees of their contracted
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companies (Batt et al., 2005). Here, the man-power is not substituted but unconstructively
complemented and decidedly broadened with techno-power. Premilla D’Cruz and Ernesto
Noronha (2013: 473) observe the same idea and opine that “the employment of call centre
technology as a monitoring and measurement device did not spell the end of human
supervision.” For, with a master screen at a centre point there are persons overlooking and
keeping an eye on every operation. Our point here is that this situation in fact doubles the
effects of the above-mentioned power control and enlarges the power distance.
The various situations of decreasing job performance and productivity and of inappropriate
or misuses of company resources and the resultant security and other performative issues such
as cyber slacking increase the espionages in the Indian organizational work context. This
orientation of surveillance practices in India is also something similar to the classical
Taylorism that “to increase productivity and reduce costs by monitoring the use of time and
the performance of tasks, and by devising methods to save time and increase productivity”
(Upadhya and Vasavi, 2006: 65). However, an invasive and persistent surveillance induce in
the employees a manipulative action that focuses more on the activities being monitored and
alter the statistics with purposeful and necessary influences and thus negatively affect the
overall performance of organizations (Blakemore, 2005). The Poor Constitutional and
Legislative Security with regard to surveillance and employee rights increases the outsized
implementation of such technologies and practices in India to scrutinize individual worker
(Krishnan et al., 2006). Apart from the constitutionally recognized fundamental rights – right
to freedom and right to life and personal liberty – there is no explicit reference to the nature or
extend of surveillance or to a right to privacy. In this research, all the consequences observed
extensively in the Indian organizational situations, along with their socio-ethical response,
will be investigated.
3. Research Methodology and Sample Collection
As a systematic way of conducting a research, a methodology refers to “the principles and
ideas on which researchers base their procedures and strategies (methods)” (Holloway and
Galvin, 2017: 21). A qualitative research methodology is employed in this study in view of
getting a comprehensive understanding of the real-time experience of employees who are in
the field. It is a scientific research that “systematically uses a predefined set of procedures to
answer the question, collects evidences [and] is especially effective in obtaining culturally
specific information about the values, opinion, behaviours, and social contexts of particular
populations” (Mack et al., 2005: 1). This is particularly designed to either affirm what have
been explored and discussed in the literature reviews or to reject the argument with sufficient
proofs and verifications, and hence the scope and originality of this research. It is exploratory
in nature and tries to unravel the underlying reasons and motivations of a particular attitudinal
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and behavioural patterns over a perceived issue. Of the manifold methods, such as analytical
induction and interpretive phenomenological analysis available in qualitative research, this
study takes phenomenography (Marton, 1981; Akerlind, 2012) as its general-background
approach in conducting the research and describing the data.
This approach [phenomenography] is described as a “research which aims at description,
analysis, and understanding of experiences; that is, research which is directed towards
experiential description” (Marton, 1981: 180). By generally placing this phenomenographic
approach within the scope of this study, the possibility of personalized expression of
employees’ real-time experience on workplace surveillance and the nuanced insights are
ensured. Phenomenography comes significantly important within the scope of this research
due to its implication for the analysis of individual experiences about a social phenomenon
with the involvement in the day-to-day experiences and its added collective meaning seeking
process. The relevant data on a particular phenomenon obtained in semi-structured online
survey are described and analyzed through the framework of phenomenographic approach.
A method of survey research (semi-structured online survey) is used in this study to collect
the data. Survey research literature produce findings from subjects’ real-time experiences that
engage the interests of a particular phenomenon. A semi-structured interview method is opted
as it, firstly, “allows depth to be achieved by providing the opportunity on the part of the
interviewer to probe and expand the interviewee's responses” (Rubin and Rubin, 2005: 88).
Secondly, in this method, researchers can use a basic checklist, which “allows for in-depth
probing while permitting the interviewer to keep the interview within the parameters traced
out by the aim of the study” (Berg, 2007: 39). This type of interviewing method is significant
also because it would allow covering various issues concerning the subject matter of this
study. The researcher’s influence on the informants or the event is very minimal and thus the
informant alone reconstructs the social event and the “here” and “now” of the situation in a
spontaneous language.
Thus, the semi-structured survey attempts to measure the real feelings and responses of
employees who are working under severe monitoring. A rigorous analysis is performed on the
responses to explore and examine various parameters that affect employee performance and
life chances when electronic monitoring is implemented. The online survey with both male
and female graduate professional techies (IT professionals) employed in different capacities
from business executives to administrators working with both domestic and international IT
companies situated in India. Table 1 shows the application of methodology and different
approaches employed in this research.
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Table 1: Particulars, Sample & Methodology
Particulars Sample & Methodology
Types of Research Empirical Research (Qualitative)
Sample Size 118
Sample Unit Employees of IT, ITeS. BPOs and other Business Organizations
Survey Method An online semi-structured questionnaire through emails and
weblinks (Survey Monkey).
Analysing Tool Microsoft Excel 2010; NVivo
Analysing Method Phenomenography
For this study, data are collected from business executives and IT professionals employed
at several organizations all over India. Among them, employees belonged to IT, ITeS, BPO
sectors in South India, such as different tenants in the Infopark (Tata Consultancy Services
(TCS), Wipro, UST Global, EXL Services, etc.), Kochi, Kerala; in the Technopark (Infosys
Limited), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala; and in the International Tech Park (Accenture
Services Pvt. Ltd.), Bangalore, Karnataka, were given more concentration for the precision
and accuracy of the data and of the study. It also reduces the problems that may arise from
mere randomized response collection of a study. Other respondents were from the randomly
selected organizations (TCS, Wipro, WNS, Samsung, AXA, Infosys, HSBC, HCL
Technologies, Zenta, Cognizant, Accenture, IBM, etc.) among the broad range of companies
situated in various parts of India. To enable employees to freely express their real feelings and
the experiences about the subject matter deprived of any hindrances (job security, fear of
firing from the authority, etc.), these participants were directly contacted without consulting
the HR or other department of these selected organizations.
4. Result Section: Data Collection and Analysis
The main purpose of the result analysis is to present and illustrate the findings. On
agreeing to carry out this research, a total of about 155 employees were given the survey
questionnaire via online, of which a total of 118 usable responses (76.0% response rate) were
collected, comprising 68 males (57.63%) and 50 females (42.37%), ranging between 22-36
years of age (Figure 1). The pie charts and the bar charts given below show the graphical
representation of the data collected from the random people working in various IT and
business firms in India. From the data analysis, among 114 people who answered the question
about the presence of ubiquitous surveillance or monitoring practices, 88.6% agreed that their
company use ubiquitous electronic monitoring/surveillance (CCTV cameras, Phone, computer
and Internet Monitoring, GPS, RFID, etc.) at work, where as a minor percentage (11.4%)
stated that their company doesn’t use them at all. Four participants skipped this question
(Figure 2).
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Figure 1: Respondents
Figure 2: Use of surveillance technologies
The next question was formulated with multiple choice answers, where the respondents
could choose one or more answers as they feel like about the described variables (data items).
These variables or data items were added to the questionnaire as they ranked more, both in
positive and negative sides of the scenario, in the reviews and discussions with several
literatures on the subject. The data shows various viewpoints working under 24/7 electronic
surveillance in your work place. Among 118 respondents 6 people skipped this question. 112
people answered this, of which almost 50 (44.6%) people agree that it ensures security. At the
same time 91 respondents, including the few who speaks about security, are really concerned
that it hinders the privacy at work (42.0%) and restricts the freedom and autonomy (39.3%).
This adversely reflects in their work efficiency when they feel they are not been trusted and
valued, says 44 people consisting 39.3% of the respondents.
The percentage of people who are experiencing the physical and mental stress are also
equally lies same. It covers 41 respondents in number, representing 36.6%. About 33 (29.5%)
people state that they experience a kind of uneasiness and dissatisfaction at work whereas
another almost equal percentage of them (31.3%) say that they are not bothered at all about
the surveillance. A percentage (19.6%) of the respondents state that, surveillance creates a
dehumanizing effect and disrespect to the human dignity and are being subjugated and
Gender
Answer
Options
Response
Percent
Response
Count
Male 57.6% 68
Female 42.4% 50
answered question 118
skipped question 0
Answer
Options
Response
Percent
Response
Count
Yes 88.6% 101
No 11.4% 13
answered question 114
skipped question 4
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dominating by a higher official (16.1%), which can generate an over-consciousness towards
the work leading to several behavioural alternations in one’s life (14.3%). From all these
viewpoints, most interesting point was only a minor percentage (25.0%) says that surveillance
increases one’s productivity (11.6%) and helps to being responsible at work (13.4%). See
Figure 3 for the pictorial presentation of this data.
Figure 3: Response to Ubiquitous Surveillance
How do you feel working under 24/7 electronic surveillance in your work place? [multiple choice]
Answer Options Response
Percent
Response
Count
I don't bother about it 31.3% 35
It ensures security 44.6% 50
It increases my productivity 11.6% 13
I feel responsible at work 13.4% 15
I feel completely uncomfortable and thus job dissatisfaction 29.5% 33
I feel no freedom and autonomy 39.3% 44
I feel lack of privacy at work 42.0% 47
I feel dehumanizing and loss of my human dignity 19.6% 22
I feel stress, and too much tensed and worrying 36.6% 41
I feel not being trusted and valued 39.3% 44
I feel like being subjugated to a dominating other 16.1% 18
I become over-conscious leading to behavioral alterations 14.3% 16
Other 8.0% 9
answered question 112
skipped question 6
Figure 4: Surveillance and Behavioural Tendencies
From the aforementioned total participants, 106 people (89.83%) have responded to the
question dealing with the various behavioural tendencies that develop, directly or indirectly,
due to the ubiquitous surveillance practices. As Figure 4 shows, 12 people skipped this
question. Among the respondents, 52.8% says that the surveillance reduces the risky actions
Does surveillance lead to further behavioral tendencies like: [multiple choice]
Answer Options Response
Percent
Response
Count
fostering favorable behaviors 21.7% 23
reducing risky actions and performance 52.8% 56
making use of unobserved spaces 42.5% 45
increasing partiality, favoritism, etc. from the authority 32.1% 34
being categorized with suspicion 46.2% 49
(stress) leading to deviance such as intentional absenteeism, etc. 35.8% 38
(stress) affecting family life, marital relationships 22.6% 24
(stress) leading to aggressive behaviors and occupational violence 33.0% 35
Other 2.8% 3
answered question 106
skipped question 12
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and performances. A particular percentage (42.5%) argues that they make use of the
unobserved spaces for utilizing for their private activities. Several of the respondents (46.2%)
were really concerned of being categorized and being suspicious. This ultimately leads to
attitudinal and behavioural deviances such as intentional absenteeism (35.8%) and creates
aggressive behaviours and occupational violence (33.3%). Furthermore, this leads to
favoritism and preference towards the few with vested interests, says 21.7%. Likewise, the
effects of these unwanted surveillance and the consequent stress also adversely affect
employees’ marital relationships (22.6%). Finally, out of three participant who chose to
respond to the option ‘other,’ one said that “it [surveillance] makes me to behave not in my
natural way, but for the desired interest of my supervisor.”
The data analysis explicates that 75.9% of the respondents prefer to work without being
monitored. Other 24.1% prefers various surveillance systems at the work place. Out of 114
people (96.6%) who responded (4 people skipped) to the question, intend to seek the aspect of
individual ability and intention to take responsibility without any force or constrains of
external monitoring, the highest percentage (98.2%) confirmed that they are and will be
responsible at work without being monitored electronically, while very minimal respondents
(1.8%) said the contrary. Nine participants commended to this question in a narrative form
Those who are in favor of monitoring speak about security reasons as the prime concern.
Others argue with the elements of work ethics consisting dedication, responsibility and
commitment to the work. The final question aimed to pick up employee preferences on
monitoring practices in the organizations. The participants could opt for multiple choices and
out of 114 (96.6%) respondents, 86 people (75.4%) preferred self- monitoring (Figure 5)
rather than external monitoring (22.8%) or no electronic monitoring systems (37.7%).
Figure 5: Employee Preferences
A very minimum percent of total participants was indifferent to the question either by
choosing the option ‘none of above’ (1.8%) or by skipping the question (3.4%). The result
shows that those who preferred self-monitoring covers a major portion of the respondents.
Besides, along with those argued for ‘no electronic monitoring’ few of those who claimed the
need of electronic monitoring also prefer self-monitoring as next option.
Answer Options Response
Percent
Response
Count
Yes 24.1% 26
No 75.9% 82
Why? 16
answered question 108
skipped question 10
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5. Discussion of the Results through Phenomenographic Approach
The result analysis section sets out key experimental results. The purpose and the objective
of the discussion section is to provide an interpretation of study results and substantiating it
with evidences from further literature to make feasible conclusions (Kaura, 2016). It enables
the researcher to interpret the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the collected and
analyzed results in appropriate depth by answering the research question and critically
evaluating the study. Written in a descriptive fashion, it places this study within the context of
a current and ongoing academic and disciplinary conversation. This study has explored
employees’ real-time experiences and reactions to the ongoing surveillance practices using
electronic apparatus.
Phenomenography ultimately aims at describing, analyzing and understanding people’s
experience of various aspects of a phenomenon. It fosters the researchers to be enabled with
“content-oriented and interpretative descriptions of the qualitatively different ways in which
people perceive and understand their reality” and the most significant and distinctive feature
of this approach is its “[focus] on the apprehended (experienced, conceptualized) content as a
point of departure for carrying out research and as a basis for integrating the findings”
(Marton, 1981: 177). This phenomenographic approach, thus, is distinctive in the qualitative
research traditions that “it identifies similarities and differences in the way we experience and
understand phenomena in the world around us” (Barnard et al., 212). It follows that in
workplace-monitoring research, it is important to recognize and explore the qualitatively
diverse ways a phenomenon or different phenomena are experienced and understood by
employees. In the following we analyze the employee experience of incessant monitoring in
their workplaces.
5.1 Against the Performance, Productivity, and Security Claims
Is technology the best tool to measure productivity? Can employee performance and
productivity be measured by keystrokes, time spent on computer, or lengthy calls
dialed/attended? The managements of business organizations and corporations claim to have
dramatically improved employee performance and thus increased level of productivity in the
post implementation of electronic monitoring techniques. Few studies have conducted in this
perspective (Al-Rjoub et al., 2008; Nouwt et al., 2005; Findlay and McKinlay, 2003; Bloom
et al., 2003; Porter, 2003; Lee and Lee, 2002; Conry-Murray, 2001). However, this study
shows that employees feel otherwise, as they try to adhere with the organization’s standard,
compromising many of their personal and work-related desires and satisfaction. There are few
studies conducted in this regard and back-ups this study (Indiparambil 2017; Andrejevic
2014; Ball 2010; Karyda and Mitrou, 2008, 2006; Solove, 2006, 2004; Lasprogata et al.,
2004; Martin and Freeman, 2003; Findlay and McKinlay, 2003; Hartman, 1998). The
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increasing level of distrust to the organization and among themselves directly causes
employees feel job dissatisfaction.
Even while several employees further view workplace monitoring as a necessary security
tool and try to understand and accept it in this way, they do not appreciate at the core being
monitored, and don’t want to work under 24/7 surveilled environment and exhibit the
behavioural alterations to indicate the same. Though behavioural patterns and its timely
alterations in the workplace are experienced as multidetermined with many facets of life
chances, it is not viable and reasonable to think that external moderators in the workplace
such as organizational culture and practices and employer-employee relationships, guide and
direct employee behaviours in specific trails. This study was an initial attempt to explore and
commend the employee perceptions, feelings and opinion about the monitoring practices in
their workplaces.
The protective functions of electronic monitoring systems to limit the unmannerly work
practices of employees are highlighted by surveillance advocators. Though meant to function
as a ‘good watchdog’ in general, these systems familiarize several negative feelings among
the workers affecting their productivity and well-being. Several of the respondents who
accept these systems as part of security, still express their concerns in terms of a sense of
discomfort as they expose often their susceptibility and vulnerability. It also gives evidence
that employees value his or her privacy, autonomy, freedom, fairness, etc. within the work life
as it becomes the major channel to express the relationality and sociability. Continuous
observation by implementing various technologies seem to reduce employees’ motivation to
commit extra in-role responsibilities. Many are concerned about and further commented on
the cynical and pessimistic approach adopted by their employer which increases detrimental
relationship with the employers and with peer workers. Feeling of loss of dignity and lack of
empowerment make the situation worse from employee perspective.
Does it function as a performance management tool? It is said to have also aimed at
worker’s training and development. Deviations are rarely pointed out for improving employee
performance and services, rather commonly used to punish the culprits (Smith and Amick III,
1989). As Bhave (2014) expressed in his work on the electronic performance monitoring and
employee job performance, this study also shows that the surveillance, no matter in excessive
or non-excessive levels, becomes detrimental to employee performance. For instance,
electronic monitoring inhibits freedom at work. Freedom at work is vital to construct a
freedom centered approach leading to a freedom centered enterprise and authority. This also
support the claim of employees that they are not robot to monitor all-time during the work.
For, lack of freedom constrains the self-disclosure as a human self. Freedom in the workplace
indirectly promotes a growth in mindset to examine the issues, if any, and to be optimistic to
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manage with self-expression, focus on what a person can control by himself, and not to let
problems define him or her. Moreover, as illustrated above, the more the restriction the more
employees become rage for the other fellow humans.
Does surveillance mean to provide irrefutable or admissible evidences of any criminal
conduct in the workplace? Does it lead to greater organizational safety and security? Is it part
of a law-enforcement against work-related misconduct? Does CCTV continue to deter
crimes? Studies suggests that a displacement in crime, which is less susceptible to
surveillance tools, occurs after a period and thus fails in long term crime prevention. This
shows that, though innovative systems create uncertainty for the offender for a while, as these
uncertainty fades, offenders develop new crime skills and commit the same successfully
(Tilley, 1997). The evidence to show that the decrease in crime rates do not happen in high
and the presence of CCTV do not figure for a respectable number of offenders (Horne, 1998).
Moreover, few researchers have importantly noted that the use of increased surveillance
technologies make prosecution of transgressions more difficult and seldom, if at all, stops the
erroneous behaviors in the workplace (Martin and Freeman, 2003). The arguments of crime
prevention and liability alleviation are not always in consistent with the employee security
argument.
For instance, as one of the respondent opines, “… it is implemented as part of security, but
I feel insecure working under it, and it also restricts my freedom and privacy. Now-a-days,
monitoring is on ourselves [employees], not on our work or performance.” These specific
monitoring technologies are now targeted at employees rather than at work. Besides, the
ensuing imposed power over employees by employers now goes virtually unrestricted and
unchallenged. In the same way, it must be noted, employees (30.0% of respondents in this
study) generally admit that stress, anxiety and other detrimental outcomes of surveillance lead
to aggressive behaviours and occupational violence. Employees in this realm make use of
unobserved spaces (42.5%) to behave differently. Likewise, it is not appreciated to create an
environment where employees feel they are spied on. For, employees feel that they are being
categorized with suspicion (46.2%) and is judged accordingly increasing partiality, biased
favoritism (some remain disfavored increasing nepotism, for instance), etc. from the
authority. When it starts to affect the marital relationship and family life (22.6%), employees
develop further attitudinal and behavioural tendencies like absenteeism or presenteeism.
5.2 In Defense of Privacy, Impartial Treatment and Dignity
The justification for workplace privacy, impartial treatment and human dignity provided
by employees was beyond the conceptual basis and include the pragmatic concerns (Lund,
1992). Does electronic surveillance in the workplace respect employee privacy? This study
shows that the necessity of “personal space” is highly demanded by employees. However, the
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advent of latest information technologies and resultant data collection and manipulation
enforce employees and public to reconsider the concept of privacy and its various possible
nuances (Selmi, 2006; Martin and Freeman, 2003). Privacy is viewed here as a “good for its
own sake and not merely as a means to protect an individual or to increase productivity”
(Martin and Freeman, 2003). This study evidently proves that ubiquitous and pervasive
monitoring hinders the privacy at work, restricts the freedom and autonomy. A comparatively
substantial number of respondents claimed that surveillance invade privacy (42.0%) by
restricting freedom and autonomy (39.3%), which affects also the basis of self-determination
and self-identity.
Employees expect unbiased/unprejudiced and equitable treatment respecting their dignity
as human being, as several of them (19.6%) expressed continuous surveillance practices are
dehumanizing and as a threat to human dignity. However, it is researched that the electronic
surveillance, CCTV in particular, enforce prejudiced treatment and discrimination basing on
some narrow and stereotypical assumptions of the operators who have direct access to the
data (Dee, 2000; Norris and Armstrong, 1997; Davies, 1996). Clive Norris’ research on
CCTV usage and crime prevention and its findings pointed out that there are intensified
discriminative practices that “[t]he young, the male and the black were systematically and
disproportionately targeted, not because of their involvement in crime or disorder, but for “no
obvious reason” and on the basis of categorical suspicion alone” (Norris, 2003). The use of
data for the confirmatory or manipulative purposes largely depends upon the data holder. As
Peter French opines, “[a]lthough cameras work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a
year; rarely go sick; do not take maternity leave, refreshment or smoking breaks; and do not
go to the lavatory - they don't actually do anything. It is the operators that produce the results
required” (French, 1998).
In this research context, employees experience that the data collected is used for biased
treatment. Just as the research findings of Norris and Armstrong reveal, this discrimination is
based not on individualized behavioural criteria, but merely on being part of a particular
group (Norris, 2003; Norris and Armstrong, 1999) or situation, this study also evidently
expresses the same experiences in the workplace. This type of categorical suspicion and the
ensuing discriminatory practices intensify “the surveillance of those already marginalized and
further increases their chance of official stigmatization” (Norris, 2003). This in turn leads to
lack of autonomy, causes to affront the human dignity (Selmi, 2006; Hoeren and
Eustergerling, 2005), and thus dilutes the humanness of the employees with mere peripheral
features.
This phenomenon is evident when the target of monitoring changes. There is a shift
happening, as this study also observe, from monitoring work or performance towards
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monitoring employees themselves and from employees’ work lives to their private or personal
lives. It is pointedly difficult to evaluate employees from data taken directly or indirectly
using electronic monitoring systems that includes the assessment of the “human” aspects of
employees and their work ethics, including motivation and performance and the quality of
their work. Similarly, claims of safety and security (employer, employee, property and
service) can never surpass the ontological insecurity one feels in the workplace. The all-
pervasive external power control envelops the person and induce the feeling of powerlessness
and worthlessness of the self and its continuing vulnerability in the external world. The
quality of human [employee] existence is getting thoroughly challenged here. Therefore,
though workplace monitoring seems to be compliant with legal or regulatory framework, the
impact assessment from the perspectives of employees shows that ubiquitous surveillance
becomes problematic and can’t be ethically justified.
5.3 Power Control and the Workplace Bullying
Technologically enabled mechanisms of surveillance generally allow organizations to
obtain the objectives of rationalization (performance maximization, cost minimization) and
standardization (quality check). However, according to Babu P. Ramesh (2004: 495; Ramesh,
2008), “the degree of surveillance required at work is even comparable with the situation of
19th century prisons or Roman slave ships.” For, when employees become subjects of
incessant monitoring and all workplace interactions and behaviours are recorded and thus get
the feeling of being constantly observed and scrutinized, also turns out to be a psychological
torture for many. To the same angle, the Foucauldian concept of ‘panoptic gaze’ in relation to
workplace surveillance brings further implications such as, “the institutionalized acceptance
of management prerogatives, [...] an inevitable extension of the managerially imposed control
system, [...] the intensification of labour process” (Bain and Taylor, 2000:4) and goes beyond
the limit of disciplinary control. Thus, the work processes and behaviours that are closely
monitored emerge to conflict with the Indian work culture based on openness, individual
initiative, loyalty, trust and informality (Upadhya and Vasavi, 2006), and causes for unequal
power relationships, such as bestowing power on the monitoring agent over the monitored
(Richards, 2013).
This unequal power relation that emerged due to the persistent surveillance and rigid
controlling in the Indian socio-cultural context contributes toward an increased workplace
bullying (D’Cruz and Rayner, 2012). Premilla D’Cruz (2012: xv) defines workplace bullying,
adapting from Stale Einarsen et al. (2011), as “subtle and/or obvious negative behaviours
embodying aggression, hostility, intimidation, and harm, characterized by repetition and
persistence, displayed by an individual and/or group and directed towards another individual
and/or group at work in the context of an existing or evolving unequal power relationship.”
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The growing and excessive monitoring of work is an example for bullying in the Indian
workplaces. For, involving an abuse or misuse of power, as we have previously discussed,
this particular act namely workplace bullying in Indian organizational workplace context
refers to a repeated and unreasonable act directed towards employees and which intimidates,
degrades, offends or humiliates them (D’Cruz and Rayner, 2012; D’Cruz, 2012).
The hierarchical nature of the Indian society, which is also reflected in the organizational
workplace and its management models, is very much linked to the issues of the exercise of
power domination in the surveillance process. Thus, workplace bullying through excessive
monitoring in India isolates or stigmatizes individual employees who experience severe
adverse effects of this phenomenon, which brings forth unwarranted criticism, indifferent
treatment via exclusion and social isolation, and high stress and consequent increase in
psycho-physical problems, and invariably affects the employees’ well-being.
The rigid and panoptical systems and techniques of monitoring fasten the individual
employee sturdily to the machine (Upadhya and Vasavi, 2006). For example, the closed-
circuit video cameras fixed within and around the work floor and premises bring further
panoptical capacity, which is even continued and fostered by the centralized computer
systems that enable to map the entire activities of the employee. It leads to lesser task
performance in complex situations and further impediments in working relationships. As
Monica T. Whitty reports, the presence of the other – the social presence – often impairs the
performance on difficult task and provides deleterious effects on employees leading to greater
stress and poor satisfaction (Whitty, 2004). It makes employees feel insecure and causes a
dent in their morale and thus a gradual decline in the quality and duration of relationship.
Likewise, along with disrupting employees’ “right to work at their own pace, [surveillance]
guided by their own moral compass, [...] fosters mistrust” (Iyer, 2012) and becomes
detrimental to productivity and overall performance of organizations. Some studies reveal that
the decrease in monitoring causes to reduce the quit-rates in the organizations – high
monitoring leads to high quit rates (Batt, et al., 2005). That means, as already researched by
Stephen Deery et al. (2013), the extensive and repetitive monitoring along with high
performance targets is said to have increased the attrition rates in the Indian organizational
workplace.
Several researchers observe in the same way that surveillance leads to high stress,
towering depression, and emotional exhaustion and burnout (Batt, et al., 2005; Holman,
2004). For instance, Daria Panina opines that in any general context, “electronic monitoring is
an intrusion into worker privacy, represents a lack of trust toward employees, and often leads
to excessive control and work pacing by management” (Panina, 2009: 314). All those globally
experienced impacts of employee monitoring such as loss of self-esteem, low and
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disproportionate fair-process, increasing voyeurism, ferreting out whistleblowers, and
detrimental effect on productivity, etc. (Kesan, 2002), are in equal regard experiences in the
Indian organizational workplace as well. For, surveillance becomes detrimental to the normal
expectations and concerns of an Indian employee regarding work, namely, freedom in job,
creative performance, trust from employer and colleague, commitment, importance of data
security, efficiency in work, and understanding and appreciation, etc. For, extensive
monitoring reinforces the employees to work in a stereotypical way – like a robotic image or
in a mechanized form – who are, as George Ritzer and Craig D. Liar (2009) present, overly
regimented, dependent and overwhelmed by this practice of control, and thus becomes devoid
of any autonomy and fails to bring their ‘selves’ to work.
The virtual possibility and actual usage of data collected through monitoring to intimidate
and punish employees rather than help them improve is quite common in India. In this
context, workers individually and collectively demonstrate their capacity to resist this
increasing control of electronic panopticon through the available ways (Ellway, 2013; Bain
and Taylor, 2000). Quoting Alan McKinlay and Phil Taylor (1996), Benjamin P.W. Ellway
(2013: 5) argues that the worker resistance has been a ‘daily reality’ operating at different
“levels of consciousness, effectiveness and strength across a workplace and over time.”
Similarly, few researches such as Ellway (2013) and David Knights and Darben McCabe
(1998) admit the risk of individualistic and fragmentary nature of resistance by which workers
seek spaces for escape.
5.4 A Cluster of Other Major Employee Concerns
The surveilling working conditions create negative impacts on trust and a mutual
confidence between employer and employee (Desrochers and Roussos, 2001). This study
shows that the ubiquitous monitoring leads to high decline in employee creativity and
innovation. Employees feel and seem overwhelmed when they feel that every word they utter,
every keystroke they make, every movement they take, every document they analyze are
recorded and could be retrieved after a long time. According to this study, close to half of the
respondents (employees) in India reported excessive pressure at work. Almost all of them
pinned the blame on overwhelming productivity and performance strains demanded from
employers through monitoring. It also corresponds to previously conducted studies (Kulkarni
and Deoras, 2015; Watson, 2014). In the same way, a fulltime mask is worn by employees
when deal with unconventional or sweeping ideas to filter the communication and its content.
The monitoring process forces employees to conform to the demonstrated desires and demand
of employers and thus the creativity is stifled and muted in the workplace and that reduces the
work performance. In this situation, an assumed importance to work-quantity over work-
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quality is apparent among employees (Aiello and Svec, 1993; Westin, 1992). The worry about
the observer’s desire and decision is constant and hinders the innovative forward movements.
It gradually leads to a viable submission to the authority, called ‘paternalistic expectations’
of the authority (Hartman, 1998; Martin and Freeman, 2003). This shows that in employer –
employee relationship, “employees began to act like children with parental expectations” and
“may begin taking on the role of children as their employer decreases their level of privacy”
(Martin and Freeman, 2003: 356-357). The feeling of vulnerability and powerlessness is the
key result factor here. Another disturbing effect of this compulsive submission is, as we read
in the psychoanalytic work - Escape from Freedom - of Erich Fromm (1969: 269) that
“individual becomes an automaton, loses his self, and yet at the same time consciously
conceives of himself as free.” The distinction that Fromm makes between ‘freedom from’
(free from restriction placed by others or institution) and the ‘freedom to’ (to engage in
creative and spontaneous acts with integrated personality) causes to “the spontaneous
realization of the self,” in which “man unites himself anew with the world” (Fromm, 1969:
261). Lack of this forms of freedom in the workplace and the complete subjugation to the
authority as a paternalistic figure cause the uncertainty in how to engage the work in a
systematic and innovative way.
Workplace monitoring also leads to behavioural alterations that it changes the way
individuals think and act when they are and are not being surveilled or watched. The feeling
towards the work and workplace, attitudes and beliefs, emotions and behaviours adversely
change when working under continuous exposure to surveillance (Stanton, 2000). Besides,
the observed, for instance, start to think and act in the ways and demands of the observer. It is
called as “anticipatory conformity” where “the socially desirable response is presented in
anticipation of the demand” (Brown, 2000: 64). Here arises the presentation of a desired [or
occasionally undesired] response in anticipation of the demands in the lead of employee
choices. This situation results in the creation of an inauthentic self and becomes everyday
projections, which often, as Brown (2000: 64) illustrates, “leads to feelings of guilt over
perceived unworthiness of the authentic self, and awareness of the gulf between the idealized
self and the realized self.” The end-result of this phenomenon is the cavernous feeling of
alienation (Brown, 2000), which is reflected in the workplace in the form of absenteeism,
presenteeism and high level of employee attrition.
Working under continuous monitoring leads also to noted levels of depression and anxiety,
stress and the related health hazards among monitored employees than non-monitored
employees (Fazekas, 2004; Smith et al., 1992; Levi, 1994; Amick III and Smith, 1992).
Electronic monitoring in the workplace, according to Richard L. Worsnop (1993: 1025),
makes employees “feel like prisoners hooked up to a computer; mistreated, guilty, paranoid,
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enslaved, violated, angry, and driven at a relentless pace.” It is observed from the data
analysis of the current study that the percentage of people who are experiencing the physical
and mental stress are about 37%. It also leads to somatic health complaints and emotional
disorders (Büyük and Keskin, 2012; Mishra and Crampton, 1998). About 30% of the
respondents states that they experience a kind of uneasiness and various other health related
problems and dissatisfaction at work.
One of the adverse effects of CCTV camera on health of employees is due to the radiation
emission (Smith, 2016; Kruegle, 2007). CCTV cameras as electronic devices possess some
minor radiation emission. Some surveillance cameras have infrared (IR) emitters around the
lens so that they can capture the images even in complete darkness. Being an electronic
device, these possess small electromagnetic field around them and transmit the radio
frequency (RF) signals to the data base station. Though these radiation emissions are in
negligible amount, the long-term exposure to these radiations can cause serious health
problems on employees. For instance, People who work in circumstances where they are
exposed to infrared radiation for prolonged periods of time may experience damages in eyes,
skin and other body tissues. Due to a long-term exposure for this radiation effect can cause
various problem such as cardio problems, iron deficiency in blood etc. Radiation can damage
the DNA inside a cell's nucleus, and if the DNA becomes sufficiently damaged, the cell can
become cancerous. Exposure to excessive amounts of radiation, or lower amounts over an
extended period, can significantly increase the risk of developing aforementioned diseases.
IR causes scratches in tissues that it develops as tissue-specific lesions, which are hardly
predictable in normal encounters as it arises either after few months or years of continuous
exposure (Rana et al., 2010). The severity of the radiation-induced skin injury and other
complications and health hazards largely depend on the dose received, the exposed skin and
the radio sensitivity of individuals. Besides this, there are studies on the hearing deficiency
due to prolonged exposure to radiofrequency radiation (Oktay et al., 2004), that can be
applied to workplace. Similarly, the GPS devices used in automobiles generate excessive
amounts of radiation during use, which, after continued and extended use, can cause dizziness
and insomnia on employees and it harms the reproductive system (Fei, 2013). These problems
sternly affect the employees who are continuously being exposed to such electronic devices.
As discussed, the implementation and use of electronic surveillance is on the rise and now
routine in Indian organizational workplaces. The socio-cultural and economic situations,
including commerce and trade, in India significantly support this scenario. This study also
proofs that the active monitoring systems in the workplaces are increasing (88.6% of
respondents acknowledged the presence of electronic monitoring systems in their companies)
and the performance and communications of employees are under strict scrutiny and
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investigation. Though few employees positively responded to surveillance practices and tend
to accept it as part of security, many of them still expresses its negative impacts. Studies
prove that any external monitoring practices bring negative effects on employees (Aiello and
Kolb, 1995; Kidwell Jr. and Bennett, 1994; Griffith, 1993; Nebeker and Tatum, 1993;
DiTecco et al., 1992; Smith, et al., 1992). It increases stress-level in employees and decreases
job satisfaction. Increased productivity is not always happening as expected and if at all
happening, it accompanies a quality decrease in the products and services and the resultant
customer satisfaction and loss of reputation. Besides, researchers like Stanton (2000) also
doubt about the long-term effects of the surveillance practices than the immediate end-result
that seems temporary or fading in no time.
5.5 A Responsible “Self-Monitoring” as Employee Preference
Analyzing all these employee responses this study shows that ‘on/off the job’ surveillance,
from employees’ perspectives, is not an easy or readymade resolution for employers that can
fix all the problems arising in the workplace. What, then, the employees themselves seek and
stand for? When employees strongly uphold and express that “I am sure that in order to be
productive and responsible I do not need an external monitoring,” a self-emerging employee
need and ability of being self-disciplined in the workplace is revealed. A responsible self-
monitoring is preferred by most of the employees responded in this study. For, majority of the
respondents prefers to work without being monitored and feel uncomfortable with
surveillance practices in the workplace. It is expressed as they opine “it takes away my work
satisfaction,” “I am not a slave to work like this,” “I feel I have the dedication and
commitment towards the work which I'm doing and “my responsibility does not change
according to the level of external monitoring,” etc. These employees are ready to take any
responsibility without outward force or constrains of external monitoring. Majority of
employees (more than 75 percent) who responded to this study preferred self-monitoring,
instead of any kind of external electronic or non-electronic surveillance to improve efficiency
and effectiveness in the workplace.
Self-monitoring generally refers to the ability of individuals “to adjust his or her behaviour
to external, situational factors” (Robbins et al., 2015: 545). This leads in this research context
to produce better performance rating and increased productivity in each situation. The concept
of self-monitoring is first introduced by Mark Snyder (1974) and perceived as a social
construct of expressive behaviour. It is a personality trait and individual ability to regulate or
control one’s behaviour that helps him or her to accommodate social situations and
phenomena. Here, in this study, the concept of self-monitoring is differentiated from the
concept of impression management or the trend of being in desired public appearances. There
are studies indicating that a form of “self” monitoring is demanded and preferred by
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employees and that self-monitoring feedback loop improves performance in various situation
(Ivancevich and McMahon, 1982). Self-monitoring is found to be strong and better motivator
than any other kinds of monitoring, and a responsible self-regulation in the workplace is ten
times higher in increasing efficiency and productivity (Stanton, 2000).
Behavioural Self-Monitoring (BSM) is being researched now in many disciplines (Olson
and Winchester, 2008; Critchfield and Vargas, 1991). Psychologists and physicians often
apply and insist the method of BSM for individuals to repeatedly observe, evaluate and record
one’s own behavioural tendencies for the purposes of treatment (Olson and Winchester,
2008). In the workplace, it enhances self-regulatory processes and thus improve productivity,
safety and health. When targeted job responsibilities, self-monitoring increases productivity
and enhanced workplaces relationships. It also has motivational effects as it identifies
stressors, hazards or harmful behaviours in the workplace. Self-monitoring on productivity or
safety behaviors, according to Olson and Wichester (2008: 14), “may reveal motivating
discrepancies […] between current and goal levels of behavior, or when goals are met, the
data may function as conditioned reinforcers.” Researchers have also identified the optimal
performance gains in various self-monitoring conditions (Stanton, 2000).
It is to be noted that, as Gudykunst et al. (1989) argue, both the individualist and
collectivist cultures influence self-monitoring differently and that people of individualistic
backgrounds are seemed to be low self-monitors and that of collectivist value conformity to
ingroups and thus are high self-monitors. India’s collectivist cultures and traditions show that
India is low in individualism and thus her employees with more collectivist practices are more
self-monitors. However, the workplace applications of BSM has not received enough
attention in the research scholarship (Olson and Winchester, 2008). There is also a danger that
when electronic surveillance is becoming ubiquitous and more common, the above mentioned
BSM procedures may also be manipulated as a “management method for “checking up on” or
“spying on” workers” (Olson and Winchester, 2008: 16). Therefore, self-monitoring as a
feasible strategic approach to employee management is recommended for further research.
6. Limitations of the Study
This study has its limitations as well. The job nature and the position of survey
respondents would seem to limit the generalizability of the results. Errors that occur in the
data from incorrect or manipulated responses due to (1) the misunderstanding and
misinterpretation of terms and the intended meaning of the questions; (2) the fear of being
mistreated or even punished by the authority; and (3) the distress of questions concerning
sensitive issues. Similarly, the individual response may not always represent the self, rather
bias answering. The nature, relevance and the respondents’ experiences of the topic being
discussed determines or limits the truthfulness of the responses. The mixing up of the
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potential and the actual tensions in the area discussed determines the validation of interim
findings. When respondents are forced to opt for alternatives given, spontaneity and creative
thinking is limited. Regarding the adaptability, it is very difficult to closely follow the
feelings, thoughts and reasons behind it. The result analysis gave predominant consideration
to the adverse effects of implementing electronic surveillance mechanisms and systems in the
organizational workplace. The findings of this study complement and fit with the findings of
the growing scholarly literature that explain the negative impact of electronic surveillance in
the workplace. This study takes seriously the employee perspective, and not the overall
integrative appearances.
7. Conclusion
This study reveals the detrimental effects of workplace surveillance and the complexity to
understand the paradoxical viewpoints. Surveillance is positively regarded as a management
technique useful in ensuring quality service and increased productivity guaranteeing
protection from theft, legal liabilities and over expenditures due to fraud, dishonesty, or
misconduct. It helps to track employees’ positions in time and space and expose employees
who are ‘working hard’ and those who are ‘not pulling their weight. It leads to more
objective and fact-based feedback and performance appraisal. However, by meticulously
observing and critically analyzing the anticipated and actual effects of workplace surveillance,
this study has identified and explored the forgotten issues of workplace surveillance and
argued that the benefits engendered by surveillance practices cannot overrule the individual,
social and ethical concerns of employees heightened by them. There are several ways in
which excessive monitoring can become detrimental to employees, for it invades workers’
privacy, disturbs their physical and psychological serenity, erodes their sense of dignity and
frustrates their efforts to do high-quality work by promoting a single-minded emphasis on
speed and other purely quantitative measurements. It has been shown to cause behavioural
bondage in the workplace, whereby one is forced to act and even think according to the
requisites of the actual or virtual observer and thus employee autonomy, creativity and
freedom shrink drastically.
Though the researches in this area draw mostly on psychological and legal perspectives,
this study shows that an explicit need for a socio-ethical perspective is widely recognized.
Employees possess totally different attitudinal and behavioural positions when they are being
covered and not being covered under surveillance. Variables like trust, commitment,
efficiency, performance are not related to electronic or any types of monitoring in the
workplace. Finally, workplace monitoring does not help to achieve long terms goals and
objectives and shows that employees’ and the organization’s success is independent of any
external monitoring employed in the workplace. It also affirms the exploration of negative
Global Journal of Contemporary Research in Accounting, Auditing and Business Ethics (GJCRA)
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impacts of workplace surveillance on employees and the ethical surpassing of employee rights
as an independent individual of worth and dignity, resulted from the literature reviews.
Therefore, from employ perspectives, electronic monitoring is not a viable solution for
workplace problems. The contention here is that, it is morally wrong to use electronic
surveillance, 24/7 ubiquitous monitoring, in the organizational (IT, ITeS, BPO) workplace.
These conclusions, showing the negative effects of electronic surveillance in real work
situations, are consistent with other previously conducted studies examined in the
aforementioned sections. This research points out to the significance of the further research on
the phenomenon of body ontology in relation to the normative and moral concepts of bodily
integrity, human dignity and human transcendence and argues that these notions and
employee concerns are based on a body ontology essential to hold in the workplace.
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