Electronic monitoring in their own words: an exploratory study of employees' experiences with new types of surveillance

Electronic monitoring of employees has recently begun to take new forms suc h as email and web site monitoring. In an exploratory study of these new ty pes of monitoring, 53 employed individuals responded to an anonymous, on-li ne, open-ended query about their related experiences. Content analysis of t he resulting textual data explored two issues: the extent to which electron ic monitoring shaped employees' behavior and the reasoning processes by whi ch employees decided whether or not the monitoring was a negative experienc e. Results of the content analysis suggested that behavior was influenced b y the capabilities of monitoring in combination with managerial expectation s. Employees' attitudes about monitoring appeared to be dependent, in part, on the uses to which monitoring information was put. Finally, an unexpecte d focus on sexual content on the Internet revealed that employees had assim ilated managerial concerns about organizational reputation. (C) 2000 Elsevi er Science Ltd. All rights reserved.