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 such as email and web site monitoring. In an exploratory study of these new types of monitoring, 53 employed individuals responded to an anonymous, on-line, open-ended query about their related experiences. Content analysis of the resulting textual data explored two issues: the extent to which electronic monitoring shaped employees' behavior and the reasoning processes by which employees decided whether or not the monitoring was a negative experience. Results of the content analysis suggested that behavior was influenced by the capabilities of monitoring in combination with managerial expectations. Employees' attitudes about monitoring appeared to be dependent, in part, on the uses to which monitoring information was put. Finally, an unexpected focus on sexual content on the Internet revealed that employees had assimilated managerial concerns about organizational reputation. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.