Electronic monitoring and surveillance in the workplace: modeling the panoptic effect potential of communication technology, organizational factors and policies

In the post-September 11th world, issues of privacy and surveillance have come to the front of concerns among the citizens of this nation. With the USA PATRIOT Act now in place, many are concerned about the effects it will have on the general population, in addition to the terrorist organizations it is intended to thwart. It has also brought more attention to the practice of organizational surveillance of employees, which occurs in nearly 80% of organizations. This dissertation project examines the panoptic effects of electronic monitoring and surveillance (EM/S) of social communication in the workplace, and the underlying elements that lead to these effects. This research provides future scholars with a new framework from which to study EM/S and privacy in the organization from the vantage point of contemporary communication technologies such as telephone, voicemail, e-mail, and instant messaging, utilized for organizational communication. As part of this research, a new model is offered that looks at three key components of the panoptic effect: a) communication technology use, b) organizational factors, and c) organizational policies for EM/S. Data was collected primarily via a web-based survey of individuals (N = 307) from a variety of organizations across the country. Results indicated a number of significant findings, but only mixed support overall (and no support for the overall model tested). First, individual beliefs about a communication technology’s surveillance capabilities was found to be a strong predictor of the perceived surveillance potential for that technology. Second, individuals in organizations with a perceived open communication climate perceived less surveillance potential from organizational factors within the organization. Next, the presence of and enforcement of a right-to-monitor policy were strong predictors of perceived surveillance potential from EM/S policies. Significant relationships were found between increases in overall panoptic effects from the three principal components with both reduced perceptions of privacy and perceived organizational fairness. Based on these results, theoretical contributions of the study along with practical implications are reviewed.