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Monitoring what and how: Psychological implications of electronic performance monitoring
Abstract
Link to article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/ntwe.12039/
Implementing electronic performance monitoring in the workplace might improve the efficiency and quality of employee data that are collected. These intended benefits might be discounted or even eliminated if employees have a negative reaction to the monitoring process. The goal of this exploratory study was therefore to investigate which electronic performance monitoring techniques and monitoring characteristics are associated with negative employee reactions using survey responses from 190 student workers. Results showed that close performance monitoring (via cameras, data entry, chat and phone recording) had significant negative effects on job attitudes such as job satisfaction and affective commitment. Similar effects were observed for employee self-efficacy and perceived control. Attitudes were furthermore negatively impacted when the monitoring was focused on individuals and unpredictable, which also reduced organisational citizenship behaviour while continuous monitoring reduced self-efficacy. These findings suggest that the benefits of close monitoring may be overshadowed by negative employee reactions.
... While much has been made of the potential operational benefits associated with these technologies (Baritto et al., 2020;Matani, 2020), scholars have also noted that the implementation of these digital tools often includes the ability of employers to closely monitor employee performance and compliance with policies (Daus, 2019;Laguir et al., 2022;Verma, 2017). This use of electronic performance monitoring (EPM) has met with mixed results in the extant literature, with some studies finding it can increase employee productivity and resource planning (Kalischko & Riedl, 2021) while others find the use of EPM can lead to lower morale, lower job satisfaction, higher stress (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015;Kalischko & Riedl, 2021;Rafnsdóttir & Gudmundsdottir, 2011) and may incentivize counterproductive work behaviors (Shaffer & Darnold, 2020), especially behaviors not subject to increased monitoring (Scott et al., 2021). ...
... Electronic performance monitoring has become increasingly ubiquitous in recent years as a tool for managers to assess employee behavior and evaluate performance (Rafnsdóttir & Gudmundsdottir, 2011). While EPM has been linked to improved employee performance through productivity increases and better resource planning (Kalischko & Riedl, 2021), much of that is predicated on the inclusion of employees in the decision-making process of which behaviors to monitor and how they are applied to ensure performance standards are met (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015) and through linking employee behavior to positive incentives (Latack, 1986). Importantly, EPM has also been associated with higher employee stress, lower job satisfaction, lower morale, and lower affective commitment, especially when monitoring is continuous (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015;Kalischko & Riedl, 2021;Rafnsdóttir & Gudmundsdottir, 2011). ...
... While EPM has been linked to improved employee performance through productivity increases and better resource planning (Kalischko & Riedl, 2021), much of that is predicated on the inclusion of employees in the decision-making process of which behaviors to monitor and how they are applied to ensure performance standards are met (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015) and through linking employee behavior to positive incentives (Latack, 1986). Importantly, EPM has also been associated with higher employee stress, lower job satisfaction, lower morale, and lower affective commitment, especially when monitoring is continuous (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015;Kalischko & Riedl, 2021;Rafnsdóttir & Gudmundsdottir, 2011). Research suggests the use of coercive control systems, those used to monitor employee behavior, measure compliance with organizational rules, and sanction punitive measures in the case of noncompliance (Adler & Borys, 1996;Weaver & Trevino, 2001), may, in fact, increase counterproductive work behaviors (Shaffer & Darnold, 2020). ...
The use of electronic performance monitoring is becoming increasingly widespread in conjunction with the digitalization of today's supply chains, yet the efficacy of these systems to improve desired performance outcomes is still highly uncertain. This study examines the effect of a federal regulation mandating the adoption of electronic data logging devices for commercial truck drivers in late 2017 and the efficacy of this regulatory effort in improving safety through an analysis of motor vehicle fatalities pre- and post-mandate. Results of a difference in difference estimation show the ELD mandate failed to reduce motor vehicle fatalities, and, in fact, may have increased overall fatality rates. These findings suggest that the expected benefits of electronic monitoring are likely to be highly contingent on proper design and implementation and a failure to consider the broader effects may lead to negative outcomes.
... An additional source of disorder in the EPM literature is the diverse research methodologies used by researchers, making comparisons across studies challenging. In addition to experimental work, EPM researchers frequently conduct cross-sectional survey research using idiosyncratic or self-developed scales (e.g., Arnaud & Chandon, 2013;Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015;Stanton, 2000). Researchers have also used vignette-based studies to explore the psychological effects of EPM. ...
... McNall and Roch (2007) found, in support of this notion, that EPM purpose influenced performance through its impact on interpersonal justice perceptions and trust in management. Wells et al. (2007) found that employees were more motivated to help their organization achieve goals when monitoring was for development rather than for performance appraisal purposes; and Jeske and Santuzzi (2015) found that monitoring with different purposes (i.e., for worker safety, to deter resource abuse) differentially influenced workers' willingness to engage in OCBs. Thus, different purposes for monitoring are likely to have different effects on individuals' motivation to perform, ultimately leading to differences in performance. ...
... Few studies have directly examined the effects of synchronous versus asynchronous monitoring and monitoring feedback on work outcomes. Although highly synchronous EPM may be perceived as more restrictive than intermittent or delayed data collection and storage, research suggests that individuals may prefer the predictability of continuous collection to the unpredictability of intermittent monitoring (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015). Compared to intermittent monitoring, however, individuals may perceive more continuous monitoring as more thoroughly and accurately capturing typical performance within and across individuals; and, therefore, it may be perceived as more procedurally fair (McNall & Roch, 2007) In general, timely feedback is considered useful for learning and skill development (Northcraft et al., 2011), suggesting that individual performance may benefit from greater synchronicity in EPM feedback. ...
Electronic performance monitoring (EPM), or the use of technological means to observe, record, and analyze information that directly or indirectly relates to employee job performance, is a now ubiquitous work practice. We conducted a comprehensive meta‐analysis of the effects of EPM on workers (K = 94 independent samples, N = 23,461). Results provide no evidence that EPM improves worker performance. Moreover, findings indicate that the presence of EPM is associated with increased worker stress, regardless of the characteristics of monitoring. Findings also demonstrate that organizations that monitor more transparently and less invasively can expect more positive attitudes from workers. Overall, results highlight that even as advances in technology make possible a variety of ways to monitor workers, organizations must continue to consider the psychological component of work. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
... An additional source of disorder in the EPM literature is the diverse research methodologies used by researchers, making comparisons across studies challenging. In addition to experimental work, EPM researchers frequently conduct cross-sectional survey research using idiosyncratic or self-developed scales (e.g., Arnaud & Chandon, 2013;Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015;Stanton, 2000). Researchers have also used vignette-based studies to explore the psychological effects of EPM. ...
... McNall and Roch (2007) found, in support of this notion, that EPM purpose influenced performance through its impact on interpersonal justice perceptions and trust in management. Wells et al., (2007) found that employees were more motivated to help their organization achieve goals when monitoring was for development rather than for performance appraisal purposes; and Jeske and Santuzzi (2015) found that monitoring with different purposes (i.e., for worker safety, to deter resource abuse) differentially influenced workers' willingness to engage in OCBs. Thus, different purposes for monitoring are likely to have different effects on individuals' motivation to perform, ultimately leading to differences in performance. ...
... Although highly synchronous EPM may be perceived as more restrictive than intermittent or delayed data collection and storage, research suggests that individuals may prefer the predictability of continuous collection to the unpredictability of intermittent monitoring (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015). Compared to intermittent monitoring, however, individuals may perceive more continuous monitoring as more thoroughly and accurately capturing typical performance within and across individuals; and, therefore, it may be perceived as more procedurally fair (McNall & Roch, 2007) In general, timely feedback is considered useful for learning and skill development (Northcraft et al., 2011), suggesting that individual performance may benefit from greater synchronicity in EPM feedback. ...
Electronic performance monitoring (EPM), or the use of technological means to observe, record, and analyze information that directly or indirectly relates to employee job performance, is a now ubiquitous work practice. We conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of the effects of EPM on workers (K = 94 independent samples, N = 23,461), while taking into account the characteristics of the monitoring. Results provide no evidence that EPM improves worker performance. Moreover, findings indicate that the presence of EPM increases worker stress and strain, regardless of the characteristics of monitoring. Findings also demonstrate that organizations that monitor more transparently and less invasively can expect more positive attitudes from workers. Overall, results highlight that even as advances in technology make possible a variety of ways to monitor workers, organizations must continue to consider the psychological component of work.
... Thus, it is a crucial factor from an organizational psychology and business perspective. Evidence indicates that monitored employees are less satisfied with their job than non-monitored ones (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). Moreover, it was found that monitoring intensity may decrease job satisfaction but corresponding results were not always statistically significant (Bartels and Nordstrom, 2012;Rietzschel et al., 2014). ...
... The results are mixed in this domain. A positive impact of EPM on OCB is reported in one study (Bhave, 2014), a negative impact in other studies (O'Donnell et al., 2013;Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015), and no impact has been reported too (Niehoff and Moorman, 1993;Jensen and Raver, 2012). Counterproductive work behavior denotes deliberate actions with the intention of harming the organization and its stakeholders (Jensen and Raver, 2012). ...
... outcomes. An implemented EPM system can increase motivation and is therefore labeled with [+] (Aiello and Kolb, 1995), it can reduce job satisfaction [−] (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015), lead to less trust [−] (Jensen and Raver, 2012), lower organizational commitment [−] (Chang et al., 2015), and increase performance [+] (O'Donnell et al., 2013). ...
The rise of digital and interconnected technology within the workplace, including programs that facilitate monitoring and surveillance of employees is unstoppable. The COVID-19-induced lockdowns and the resulting increase in home office adoption even increased this trend. Apart from major benefits that may come along with such information and communication technologies (e.g., productivity increases, better resource planning, and increased worker safety), they also enable comprehensive Electronic Performance Monitoring (EPM) which may also have negative effects (e.g., increased stress and a reduction in job satisfaction). This conceptual article investigates EPM to better understand the development, adoption, and impact of EPM systems in organizations. The EPM literature published since the 1980s constitutes the basis for this conceptual article. We present a framework which is intended to serve as foundation for future studies. Moreover, we reviewed more than three decades of empirical EPM research and identified six major outcomes that are influenced by the use of an EPM system, as well as a large number of moderator variables. Based on our conceptual analyses and the resulting insights, which also include privacy, ethical, and cultural considerations, we discuss future research opportunities where we also refer to design implications for EPM systems.
... Managers can track how employees are progressing and help employees when necessary with developmental feedback (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). They notice when some tasks are delayed or need to be reprioritized. ...
... Close and unpredictable employee monitoring has been shown to negatively impact employees' self-efficacy and reduce organizational citizenship behaviors (voluntary helping behaviors; Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). When employees are aware that they are monitored, they feel less trusted and more powerless. ...
... All current and future employees need to be informed that monitoring will be used and in what form. All managers and employees need to receive training and have access to various feedback options for employees and to evaluate these new initiatives (Al-Hitmi and Sherif, 2018;Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). Some monitoring initiatives may need to be readjusted over time, so there need to be channels and means to collect this information. ...
Purpose
More and more organizations have resorted to the employment of monitoring software to keep track of employees’ everyday performance and task completion. The current paper aims to outline the capabilities, pros and cons of monitoring for employees. Several recommendations for Human Resources (HR) professionals are outlined to inform best practice.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper summarizes recent literature and trends on electronic monitoring aimed at remote workers, focusing specifically on trends observed in the UK and the USA.
Findings
The number of pros and cons, as well as the resulting recommendations for HR professionals, outline how technology may aid – but also undermine – performance.
Originality/value
The summary of capabilities, pros and cons represents a snapshot of current monitoring practices. The recommendations will give readers an overview of all the aspects and factors that ought to be considered when monitoring software and related tools are selected.
... At the "low" end of acceptance, users may feel that monitoring is intrusive and reduces privacy, or that monitoring indicates distrust of the user (e. g., Frey, 1993). This may create negative affect in users that undermines job satisfaction, commitment, and perceived control (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015), and increases job stress (Carayon, 1994;Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). A further concern may be feelings of discomfort or anxiety associated with self-awareness instigated by monitoring (e.g., Baldwin and Holmes, 1987;Fejfar and Hoyle, 2000) and perceptions of the presence of an evaluative "other," such as a superior, colleague, or the monitoring system itself (e.g., Leitenberg, 1990;Zeidner and Matthews, 2005). ...
... At the "low" end of acceptance, users may feel that monitoring is intrusive and reduces privacy, or that monitoring indicates distrust of the user (e. g., Frey, 1993). This may create negative affect in users that undermines job satisfaction, commitment, and perceived control (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015), and increases job stress (Carayon, 1994;Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). A further concern may be feelings of discomfort or anxiety associated with self-awareness instigated by monitoring (e.g., Baldwin and Holmes, 1987;Fejfar and Hoyle, 2000) and perceptions of the presence of an evaluative "other," such as a superior, colleague, or the monitoring system itself (e.g., Leitenberg, 1990;Zeidner and Matthews, 2005). ...
Development of adaptive aids to support human performance in complex systems is a cornerstone of human factors. Research in this area has led to a diversity of ideas regarding potential activation methods. However, little guidance has been provided on how to select among aid activation methods, and this lack of guidance could hinder adaptive aid development and deployment. Within the current paper, we review available methods of aid activation and describe a process for developing and validating adaptive aiding systems. We focus on supporting system designers who wish to select the ideal aid activation method for an intended application. The process that we recommend is an empirical approach to evaluate the feasibility, costs, and benefits of various potential methods of aid activation. This methodological framework will support practitioners making critical decisions about the design of aiding systems.
... The second part of the article focuses on the potential implications as well as practitioner suggestions which identify how health professionals and practitioners can, together with other stakeholders within their organizations, create more supportive employee experiences as well as connect these to workplace health management. In order to understand the issues around electronic performance monitoring, the next section outlines some of the pre-pandemic findings about electronic monitoring that demonstrates our current knowledge about the antecedents and effects of electronic monitoring more generally (Jeske, 2021;Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015;Ravid et al., 2020;Yost et al., 2019). These findings are complemented by insights gained about the employee experience during 2020. ...
... Electronic monitoring has been a regular feature in many factory shopfloors and offices for decades. Monitoring can be distinguished in terms of its purposes, invasiveness, synchronicity (which may allow for frequent, continuous, and instantaneous recording), and the transparency of their use and deployment (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015;Ravid et al., 2020). Electronic monitoring and its effects have been explored and summaries in many different studies and practitioner reports in recent times prior to the pandemic (e.g., Abraham et al., 2019;Bhave, 2018;Bernstrøm and Martin et al., 2016;Ravid et al., 2020;Tomczak et al., 2018), the increase in monitoring was further accelerated in numerous countries due to the start of the pandemic in 2020 as many employers across the world adopted remote working practices (e.g., Allyn, 2020; Gustavsson and Söderlund, 2021;Hill, 2020;Isaak, 2020;Passetti et al., 2021). ...
This article now available online (open access): https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJWHM-02-2021-0042/full/html
=== Purpose
This conceptual article outlines the known effects of employee monitoring on employees who are working remotely. Potential implications, as well as practitioner suggestions, are outlined to identify how practitioners can create more supportive employee experiences as well as apply these to workplace health management scenarios.
Design/methodology/approach
This overview is based on a selective and practically oriented review of articles that hitherto considered the health implications of remote workers being monitored electronically over the last two years. This overview is subsequently complemented by a discussion of more recent findings that outline the potential implications of monitoring for remote employees, employees' work experience and workplace health management.
Findings
Several practitioner-oriented suggestions are outlined that can pave the way to a more supportive employee experience for remote workers, who are monitored electronically by their employers. These include the various health and social interventions, greater managerial awareness about factors that influence well-being and more collaboration with health professionals to design interventions and new workplace policies. Organizations would also benefit from using audits and data analytics from monitoring tools to inform their interventions, while a rethink about work design, as well as organizational reviews of performance and working conditions further represent useful options to identify and set up the right conditions that foster both performance as well as employee well-being.
Originality/value
The article outlines practitioner-oriented suggestions that can directly and indirectly support employee well-being by recognizing the various factors that affect performance and experience.
... These practices are rapidly superseding other forms of management methods, as data produced are seen to be a reliable indicator of productivity. New EPM then is very different from traditional methods and can have very negative consequences for employees (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). Reliance on metrics from tracking devices potentially dehumanizes employees, who are reduced to a collection of activity timestamps (Moore and Piwek, forthcoming). ...
... Reliance on metrics from tracking devices potentially dehumanizes employees, who are reduced to a collection of activity timestamps (Moore and Piwek, forthcoming). The associated violence results in biased performance evaluations; pressures for increased work or work intensification; reduction of autonomy (Bhave, 2014;Haque, 2015) (linked to privacy concerns); and perceived intensified control over individuals' work (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). These pressures lead to reduction of commitment and lowered job ...
... Alongside all of this, employees find themselves subject to increased levels of surveillance through technology, whilst using machines belonging to their employer (Harari, 2020;Satariano, 2020). Although privacy has been described as a 'fuzzy' or 'liquid' concept (Bauman and Lyon, 2011;Vasalou et al., 2015), it is important to ensure that workers, unions and managers fully understand the psychological implications of surveillance and electronic performance monitoring (Kidwell and Sprague, 2009;Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). As time goes on and society tries to find a way back to work without a vaccine, care should be taken to ensure that privacy does not become the next victim as organisations seek to ramp up contact-tracing apps, which could be viewed as attempts to 'sow the seeds of a future culture of hyper surveillance in the workplace' (Ponce del Castillo, 2020: 1). ...
... As workers increasingly find themselves part of virtual teams, using video-conferencing and social media for work, the technologies employed by those working from home are the focus of the pieces by Hallier and Baralou (2010), Panteli and Dawson (2001) and van Zoonen and Rice (2017). Of course, such technologies increase the prevalence of electronic surveillance, which is the focus of the work of Jeske and Santuzzi (2015) and Kidwell and Sprague (2009). Finally, two pieces have been chosen which detail the changing nature of resistance. ...
This paper is available for free from Wiley https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ntwe.12173
The outbreak of COVID‐19 is having a drastic impact on work and employment. This review piece outlines the relevance of existing research into new technology, work and employment in the era of COVID‐19. It is important to be retrospective and undertake both a historically and theoretically informed position on the impact of new technologies in the current crisis and beyond. Issues of control, surveillance and resistance have been central to work on the impact of technology on work and employment and these themes have been identified as central to the experience of work in the current crisis.
... Though these two concepts focus on information and communication technology, these thoughts can also be transferred to automation and algorithmic technologies. Here, digital monitoring and evaluation or digital assistance systems can on the one side be a demanding factor and im-pact job quality in a negative way by e. g., leading to lower job performance, commitment, and external control (Posey et al. 2011;Jeske and Santuzzi 2015;Martin, Wellen and Grimmer 2016;Siegel, König and Lazar 2022). On the other side, they can also ease especially physically demanding working conditions or lead to more transparency in performance evaluation (Sharma and Sharma 2017;Wood et al. 2019;Wood 2021). ...
... Evidence from electronic performance monitoring further suggests that constructive feedback should be specific and without threats (Baron, 1993), include positive reinforcement (McNall and Roch, 2009), and be regular and immediate so that employees can prepare themselves and form stable expectations regarding their learning (Holman et al., 2002). Feedback from technology is also likely to be perceived as more enabling if it is not tied to performance appraisal or financial incentives (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015) and if employee performance comparisons are used sparingly (Sapegina and Weibel, 2017). ...
Public and academic opinion remains divided regarding the benefits and pitfalls of datafication technology in organizations, particularly regarding their impact on employees. Taking a dual-process perspective on trust, we propose that datafication technology can create small, erratic surprises in the workplace that highlight employee vulnerability and increase employees’ reliance on the systematic processing of trust. We argue that these surprises precipitate a phase in the employment relationship in which employees more actively weigh trust-related cues, and the employer should therefore engage in active trust management to protect and strengthen the relationship. Our paper develops a framework of symbolic and substantive strategies to guide organizations’ active trust management efforts to (re-)create situational normality, root goodwill intentions, and enable a more balanced interdependence between the organization and its employees. We discuss the implications of our paper for reconciling competing narratives about the future of work and for developing an understanding of trust processes.
... B. Tastatureingaben, Zeiterfassung am Computer, GPS-Überwachung) können Organisationen Informationen über das Verhalten generieren und speichern. Obwohl es Studien gibt, die zeigen, dass elektronische Leistungsüberwachung mit einer gesteigerten Aufgabenleistung (Aiello & Kolb, 1995;Bhave, 2014) zusammenhängt (vor allem wenn es einfache Routinetätigkeiten sind), erhöht diese Überwachung auch das Stressempfinden der Beschäftigten (Amick & Smith, 1992) und reduziert ihre Arbeitszufriedenheit (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015). Eine aktuelle Studie aus China zeigt, dass sich die wahrgenommene Überwachung während der Pandemie darüber hinaus negativ auf die wahrgenommene Vereinbarkeit zwischen Beruf und Privatleben der Beschäftigten auswirkte (Wang et al., 2021). ...
... Previous studies have found that increasing transparency regarding the types and purposes of data collection can minimize people's negative attitudes (Anderson & Agarwal, 2011;McNall & Roch, 2007;ten Berg et al., 2019). Therefore, it is necessary to thoroughly weigh the effects of transparency and understand when transparency positively influences employees' acceptance of being monitored.While some research has been carried out on the impact of location monitoring procedures on employees' attitudes and acceptance (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015;Jeske, 2022;Wells et al., 2007), there have been few empirical investigations of the role of transparency in the acceptance of ELM. Transparency is defined as the extent to which employees are given information and notified about the characteristics of workplace monitoring (White et al., 2020). ...
In the context of smart manufacturing, the technical development of monitoring systems has made it possible to track employees with the same systems that are used to track assets. This study contri-butes to our understanding of the acceptance of location-based monitoring of employees and investigates how the perceived priv-acy risk regarding monitoring can be tackled by examining the role of transparency and the perceived value of monitoring. We designed an experimental setting in which students assembled a 3D printer and manipulated transparency with two conditions: a detailed explanation of monitoring during the task vs. monitoring without any explanation. The results show that the higher the privacy concerns and perceived risks were, the lower was the acceptance for monitoring. However, the negative effect of per-ceived risk diminishes when both, transparency and the value of monitoring are high, but becomes even stronger when only trans-parency is high and perceived value is low
... These experiences could lead to negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, embarrassment), as well as defensiveness or resentment towards coworkers, managers, and the organization. It would be worthwhile to build on research related to electronic surveillance at work to explore the potential psychological impacts of workplace alertness testing, as well (e.g., Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015;West & Bowman, 2016). ...
Around-the-clock, 24/7 operations are common in many industries, yet contribute to employee fatigue, which can have grave consequences for worker safety, public health, and the environment. Alertness testing is one option for identifying and mitigating issues related to fatigue at work. We review alertness testing options, including fatigue risk management systems and app-based tools, and share results from a study evaluating employee and manager perceptions of alertness testing. Despite a growing body of research on the validity of app-based alertness tests, it is also critical to understand how these tools are perceived by workers and management. To investigate perceptions of alertness testing, mixed-method data were collected from organizations across four safety-sensitive industries (i.e., a mining company, fire department, and two construction companies) that were in the process of implementing an alertness testing platform. Results suggest that employees and managers are open to and optimistic about implementing new alertness testing safety tools. Employees in work environments with strong managerial support for safety were particularly open-minded to alertness testing at work. However, some employees and managers expressed reluctance towards alertness tests. We provide recommendations for how occupational health and safety professionals can effectively select alertness tests and implement alertness testing. Ethical considerations related to identifying whether workplace alertness testing is needed, and how to protect employees and their data, are discussed.
... Indeed, the results of studies on the effects of monitoring in workplaces have been highly variable and have indicated the potential to both positively and negatively affect a range of psychological variables such as stress, motivation, job satisfaction, trust and commitment. 5,6 If we are to optimally utilise the potential of metrics, we clearly need to consider the wider effects of being constantly monitored and measured and evaluate the impact in this wider context. Culture has been shown to be an important mitigator in the effects of monitoring on the individual; 6 it is highly likely that the generation of metrics will be facilitated where a good relationship has been established between the coach and the athlete, where the purpose of the metrics has been fully explained prior to the collection. ...
We live in a metrics-dominated world – so much of what we do is measured
and strength and conditioning is no exception. In general, metrics are a positive
force in strength and conditioning, and used correctly provide a major tool in our
armoury - yet they are not without pitfalls. Consequently, although we should be
encouraged to utilise metrics, it is also important to remember that their role is
simply to help us make decisions – no more and no less. Metrics are not imbued
with some magical quality: all metrics have potential strengths, but also potential
weaknesses and ultimately metrics have no way of speaking for themselves –
instead we speak for them and distil any meaning,12 and so any value lies in quality
interpretation. Effective use of metrics will ultimately involve an appreciation of
their value, together with an awareness of their dangers. As Muller7
highlights:
‘While we are bound to live in an age of measurement, we also live in an age of
mismeasurement, over-measurement, misleading measurement, and counter�productive measurement.’ The potential benefits and the need to measure are
well documented in S&C, yet sometimes we are less aware of the unintended
consequences of our use of metrics and so are often blinded to some of these
effects. What this article will aim to do is to highlight some of the potential pitfalls
of metric fixation and highlight considerations that can ensure that whenever we
use measurement and data, the wider considerations are taken into account in
order to help us avoid some of the potential pitfalls.
... Since the type of work typically performed by participants is largely judged using task completion time, participants were excited about the tool's ability to potentially time them doing their work, as this would be "good for appraisals" (FG1). From a work design perspective, we understand that technology-driven performance monitoring can have negative impacts for employees [12]. However, participants expressed that they would like a way to show to themselves and their managers how they are performing and proposed timing as a solution to this. ...
... If they do not report these issues to the contractor, Rappi sends a warning through 'Soy Shopper' . It is a direct control mechanism interceded by technologies operating as Electronic Performance Monitoring (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015), where issues emerging from labor processes are identified and notified in real time. This may imply penalties or warning calls to the supervisor in charge. ...
This article describes and analyzes the labor process of Rappi, one of the main ordering and delivery platforms ( odp ) in Latin America. An exploratory qualitative case study was carried out and the results are based on the content analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews to platform workers as well as ethnographic work done in 2019–2020 in Santiago de Chile. This article contributes to, first, describe and analyze labor processes organized by an odp whose property and operation is managed in the Global South; second, it enables to explore the role played by Rappi within the Chilean retail production network; third, it connects diverse labor processes organized by odp s further on the ‘pick-up and deliver’ orders task; finally, it analyzes different control mechanisms executed by Rappi beyond algorithmic control, together with individual and collective resistance practices adopted by shoppers and riders.
(Individuals are eligible for free access to the Journal of Labor and Society until 31 December 2022, using access token JLSO4U. https://brill.com/fileasset/downloads_products/37770_JLSO4U.pdf)
... Second, evidence from many case studies shows that subordinates monitored through EPM feel additional stress than associates observed through other methods (Kolb and Aiello, 1996). Third, the expected benefits of monitoring may be reduced or even removed if workers have an adverse reaction to the EPM system (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). It sheds light on the value of trust in the relationship. ...
The present research proposes an electronic performance monitoring framework based on ambidextrous leadership and social exchange theories in a dynamic environment. It reviews and integrates essential literature on electronic performance management (EPM), trust, and ambidextrous behavior. For this, authors have reviewed relevant literature on various themes and underpinned them for managing EPM. The study emphasizes individuals’ psychological foundations that demonstrate trust behavior and relationship with their leaders. Eventually, through an ambidextrous approach, managers gain steady performance and relationships with their subordinates through EPM. The study shows that ambidexterity benefits organizations; it enhances employees’ resources, resulting in enhanced performance that leads to the performance of an organization. The authors discuss the theoretical as well as practical implications of this study.
... Due to the high reliance on technology in daily work practices, organizations can continuously observe, record, or analyze information on employees' behavior. Electronic performance monitoring results in benefits such as increased task performance (Aiello and Kolb, 1995;Bhave, 2014) but also negative effects for individual workers such as perceived stress (Amick and Smith, 1992) and reduced job satisfaction (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015). When face-to-face contacts between supervisors and subordinates are reduced, the issue of control is amplified and direct monitoring is no longer feasible (Kurland and Cooper, 2002;Sewell and Taskin, 2015). ...
This article examines managerial control practices in a public bureaucracy at the moment of introducing remote work as part with a new ways of working (NWW) project. The qualitative study builds on 38 interviews with supervisors and subordinates conducted before the advent of COVID-19. By interpreting interviewees’ conversations about current and anticipated future work practices in the changing work setting, we reveal tacit and hidden practices of managerial control that are currently prevalent in many organizations introducing remote working. Three constitutive moments of the organization’s transformation to NWW are analytically distinguished: (i) how implicit becomes explicit, (ii) how collective becomes self, and (iii) how personal becomes impersonal. Our findings emphasize that the transition to NWW must take into account prevailing institutional logics and must reconnect to a fundamental and often neglected question: What does doing work mean within the particular organization? Negotiating this fundamental question might help to overcome supervisors’ uncertainties about managerial control and provide clarity to subordinates about what is expected from them while working remotely. Finally, we discuss how the transition to NWW may serve as both an opportunity and a potential threat to established organizational practices while highlighting the challenge supervisors face when the institutional logics conflict with remote working.
... Research shows that the digital model of speech signal can be roughly divided into the excitation model, acoustic tube model, and radiation model, and from the perspective of mathematics, speech signal is a series of unsteady and time-varying process. Considering the voice privacy of long-term experiments and the limited computing power of embedded chips, the final solution of voice feature extraction is to embed short-term energy, spectral entropy, for resonance and brightness into intelligent wearable devices for online real-time feature processing [14]. ...
In order to improve the accuracy of the evaluation results of multiperception intelligent wearable devices, the mathematical statistical characteristics based on speech, behavior, environment, and physical signs are proposed; first, the PCA feature compression algorithm was used to reduce the dimension of these features, and the differences among different training samples were compared and analyzed; then, three weak classifiers are designed using the logistic regression algorithm, and finally, a strong classifier with higher prediction accuracy is designed according to the boosting decision fusion method and ensemble learning idea. The results showed that the accuracy of the logistic regression model trained with the feature data of voice PCA was 0.964, but the recall rate and crossover results were significantly reduced to 0.844 and 0.846, respectively. The accuracy, accuracy and recall of the decision fusion model based on the boosting method and integrated learning are 0.969, and the prediction accuracy of K-folds cross-validation is also as high as 0.956; the superposition fusion results of three weak classifiers achieve a better classification effect.
... Researchers also point out that the more a talented employee feels heard and understood, the more his or her engagement scores rise (Baumruk, 2006) On the other hand, a growing body of literature on AI adoption points towards a more oppressive form of digital Taylorism. For example, workers placed under biometric surveillance suffer higher degrees of technostress and burn-out (Mahapatra and Pati, 2018;Khedhaouria and Cucchi, 2019;Dragano and Lunau, 2020), loss of dignity, autonomy, and trust (Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015;Tomczak et al., 2018). Second, emotion-sensing AI, especially those that rely primarily on facial biometrics, has been shown to be widely inaccurate when dealing with gender, ethnicity, and race (Buolamwini and Gebru, 2018). ...
Affective computing, also known as emotional AI, is an emerging and cutting-edge field of AI research. It draws on computer science, engineering, psychology, physiology, and neu-roscience to computationally model, track, and classify human emotions and affective states. While the US once dominated the field in terms of research and citation from 1995-2015, China is now emerging as a global contender in research output, claiming second place for the most cited country from 2016-2020. This article maps the rhizomatic growth and development of scientific publications devoted to emotion-sensing AI technologies. It employs a bibliometric analysis that identifies major national contributors and international alliances in the field over the past 25 years. Contrary to the ongoing political rhetoric of a new Cold War, we argue that there are in fact vibrant AI research alliances and ongoing collaborations between the West and China, especially with the US, despite competing interests and ethical concerns. Our observations of historical data indicate two major collaborative networks: the "US/Asia-Pacific cluster" consisting of the US, China, Singapore, Japan and the "European" cluster of Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands. Our analysis also uncovers a major shift in the focus of affective computing research away from diagnosis and detection of mental illnesses to more commercially viable applications in smart city design. In this article, we also discuss the absence of Russia in the list of top countries for scientific output as well as state-of-the-art techniques such as the ensemble method of symbolic and sub-symbolic AI.
... For example, organizations have been documented to have used AI to record workers' overall aptitude in various skills and settings, their physical and mental health, their reproductive plans, and their food intake, with the goal of promoting and rewarding healthy behavior (Bock, 2015;O'Connor, 2015). The use of AI for these purposes has been demonstrated to have negative effects on workers' job satisfaction, affective commitment, feelings of self-efficacy and perceived control (Jeske, & Santuzzi, 2015), and beliefs that they are unseen and unnoticed by management (Anteby & Chan, 2018). Moreover, workers have also expressed data accuracy concerns, a lack of transparency about the nature and purpose of the collected data, and the inability to appeal judgments based on incorrect, biased, or incomplete data (Angwin et al., 2016;Bodie et al., 2017;Levy & Barocas, 2017;Rosenblat & Stark, 2016). ...
This chapter focuses on intensified working life via the intensified job demands (IJDs) model from the perspective of recovery from work by paying particular attention to the potentially mediating and buffering roles of recovery in the linkages between IJDs and their consequences. In empirical analyses, we examined the buffering role of psychological detachment from work during off-job time in the relationship between intensified job demands and job performance and meaning of work. We found that high psychological detachment, as a recovery experience, buffered against work intensification over time in relation to job performance and meaning of work. Thus, good detachment from work during off-job time mitigated longitudinally the association between work intensification and job performance and meaning of work. However, overall the prospective buffering effects of detachment were modest in our two-wave data as were also the longitudinal direct effects of IJDs and psychological detachment on job performance and meaning of work. More research would be needed to test the suggested theoretical model more comprehensively.
... For example, organizations have been documented to have used AI to record workers' overall aptitude in various skills and settings, their physical and mental health, their reproductive plans, and their food intake, with the goal of promoting and rewarding healthy behavior (Bock, 2015;O'Connor, 2015). The use of AI for these purposes has been demonstrated to have negative effects on workers' job satisfaction, affective commitment, feelings of self-efficacy and perceived control (Jeske, & Santuzzi, 2015), and workers' beliefs that they are unseen and unnoticed by management (Anteby & Chan, 2018). Moreover, workers have also expressed data accuracy concerns, a lack of transparency about the nature and purpose of the collected data, and the inability to appeal judgements based on incorrect, biased, or incomplete data (Angwin et al., 2016;Bodie et al., 2017;Levy & Barocas, 2017;Rosenblat & Stark, 2016). ...
In the current economic environment, organizations are increasingly relying on technology, resulting in higher efficiency, reduced physical human effort, blurring boundaries between working life and private life, and more flexibility for both employers and employees. In this chapter we focus on the impact of three different technology-related changes in the workplace: (1) telework, (2) automation, and (3) algorithmic management. First, we discuss how telework has gained tremendous popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and how it impacts performance, work-life balance, and social aspects of work. Second, we focus on the positive and negative sides of automation and digitalization: improvements of working and living conditions on the one hand and anxiety and stress among workers on the other. Third, we discuss how AI-based algorithms are used to direct, evaluate, and discipline workers and how workers respond to these forms of algorithm management. All in all, we provide organizations with suggestions and advice as to how they can successfully implement these new technologies in a human-friendly manner. In doing so, we hope that this chapter will stimulate interesting new avenues of research for understanding challenges and opportunities associated with technology in the workplace.
... The impact on the cost of output monitoring is straightforward since electronic performance monitoring devices facilitate the measurement of worker outputs (Bhave, 2014). However, computers have also substantially improved the measurability of behaviours and actions through the use of devices such as video, email monitoring, phone tapping or tracking computer content and usage time (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015). In relative terms, it seems that the positive impact has been stronger on the reduction of input monitoring costs than output monitoring costs since electronic performance monitoring is more oriented toward the accomplishment of the former. ...
Workplace digitalisation is a pervasive phenomenon associated to an increase in wage differentials between occupations. This paper analyses the relationship between computer use and pay for performance, whose incidence has also followed a positive growth pattern. More concretely, we examined three pay‐for‐performance schemes: productivity/piece rate, team and firm pay for performance. We also investigated the mediating role of job design in this relationship. The complementarity framework perspective and the economic theory of incentives were the theoretical approaches applied in the development of hypotheses. Data from four waves of the European Working Conditions Survey were used in the empirical analyses. A positive association was found between computer use and the three pay for performance schemes considered, particularly team and firm pay for performance. The results also indicated that this relationship was partially explained by changes in job design due to computerisation, such as higher job complexity, on‐the‐job training and teamwork.
... Monitoring affects trust [32] and may cause gridlock, blame, distrust and privacy concerns [38]. Some researchers have argued that it has a negative impact on job attitudes such as satisfaction and commitment [34]. It is intrusive, oppressive, stressful and invasive [33,61,64,68]. ...
Over the years, conventional monitoring devices such as video cameras and tape-recorders have been redesigned into smarter and smaller forms which can be integrated seamlessly into an environment. The purpose of these ubiquitous monitoring devices is to enable the provision of innovative applications and services that support user wellbeing. Despite improving operations in essential areas such as health, there are still concerns associated with ubiquitous monitoring. For benefits associated with ubiquitous monitoring to be fully realized, there is the need to understand the role of user perceptions. This study investigates the factors that influence user perceptions of ubiquitous monitoring devices by drawing samples from a developing country. Users’ response on seven recurring ubiquitous monitoring perceptions were collected using a survey questionnaire. The relationships among these factors were analysed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling. The results suggest a significant relationship between Perceived Natural Border Crossing and Perceived Privacy Invasion. Also Perceived Affordance, Perceived Coverage and Perceived Privacy Invasion predicted Perceived Trust. The findings imply that more emphasis must be given to educating and familiarizing users with ubiquitous monitoring devices. Future studies are expected to replicate the study in other developing societies to validate these claims.
... Digital technologies lend themselves to employer control strategies (Jeske & Santuzzi, 2015;Kidwell & Sprague, 2009). The use of surveillance as a form of social control is central to the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, and workplace surveillance, control over the labour process and worker resistance endure as salient themes in employment relations (Hodder, 2020). ...
While working from home is not a new concept, the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic has, for many in the workforce, rendered it the ‘new normal’, concomitant with enhanced use of workplace surveillance technologies to monitor and track staff working from home. Even prior to the global pandemic, organisations were increasingly using a variety of electronic surveillance methods to monitor their employees and the places where they work, whether it be in an office building or remotely. This technology traverses various facets of the work environment, including email communications, web browsing, the use of active badges for locating and tracking employees, and the gathering of personal information by employers. The application of these technologies, nevertheless, raises privacy concerns, which are exacerbated when work is undertaken in employees’ own homes, a phenomenon that has become more prevalent due to Covid-19. This article addresses the issue of electronic workplace monitoring, its implications for employees’ privacy and the role of collective bargaining in addressing this emergent practice, which has also been given new impetus during the pandemic.
... Second, negative performance feedback may be provided by machines in considerable detail, possibly even of a comparative nature (e.g., ranking, deviations from performance standards), and at much higher frequency than a human supervisor would be able to. For example, machine-based negative feedback may occur in the context of electronic performance monitoring (e.g., Stanton, 2000;Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015), which is increasingly used in industry (e.g., by a well-known American multinational transportation network company). ...
The article examines the effects of social stress on work performance in a laboratory study using a battery of performance tests. Social stress was induced by a combination of negative feedback and ostracism. Participants received negative performance feedback and were ostracised by two confederates of the experimenter. Using a one-way experimental design with three levels (machine-induced stress, human-induced stress, and no stress), 102 participants performed the following tasks: attention, divergent and convergent creativity. Participants also completed questionnaires measuring positive and negative affect, and state self-esteem. The manipulation check confirmed that social stress was successfully implemented. The results showed that social stress increased negative affect and reduced self-esteem. However, performance remained unaffected by social stress on any of the cognitive tasks, with no difference emerging between human-induced and machine-induced stress. The findings provide support for the ‘blank-out’-mechanism, which assumes that humans can maintain performance levels even under difficult working conditions.
Practitioner summary: Social stress in the form of negative performance feedback and social exclusion has a negative impact on the affect and self-esteem of humans. However, performance on subsequent tasks was not impaired.
Abbreviations: TSST: trier social stress test; SSES: state self-esteem scale; PANAS: positive and negative affect schedule; ANOVA: analysis of variance
The information revolution has ushered in a data-driven reorganization of the workplace. Big data and AI are used to surveil workers and shift risk. Workplace wellness programs appraise our health. Personality job tests calibrate our mental state. The monitoring of social media and surveillance of the workplace measure our social behavior. With rich historical sources and contemporary examples, The Quantified Worker explores how the workforce science of today goes far beyond increasing efficiency and threatens to erase individual personhood. With exhaustive detail, Ifeoma Ajunwa shows how different forms of worker quantification are enabled, facilitated, and driven by technological advances. Timely and eye-opening, The Quantified Worker advocates for changes in the law that will mitigate the ill effects of the modern workplace.
Quick response (QR) codes allow for quick and easy accessibility of just-in-time training (JiTT) for a variety of online materials. They are becoming more widely utilized to share educational materials, with potential vast applications for health professions education. In this article, we describe the development of a novel video-based equipment skills training curriculum incorporating QR codes and discuss the broader implications for educators.
Purpose
This study aims to explore the effect of digitalization on the promotion of enterprise R&D cooperation, and it analyzes the microimpact mechanism and boundary conditions of enterprise digitalization on enterprise R&D cooperation.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on survey data sourced from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys of the business environment of Chinese enterprises in 2012, this study applies multiple regression methods to test theoretical hypotheses.
Findings
Enterprise digitalization positively affects the breadth and intensity of enterprise R&D cooperation. Employees’ digital literacy plays an intermediary role between enterprise digitalization and enterprise R&D cooperation. The subordinate attributes of enterprises weaken the positive relationship between enterprise digitalization and the breadth and intensity of enterprise R&D cooperation. The shareholding of state-owned enterprises reinforces the positive relationship between digitalization and the intensity of enterprise R&D cooperation. However, such shareholding shows no significant regulatory effect on digitalization and the breadth of enterprise R&D cooperation.
Originality/value
Focusing on the digital transformation of the enterprise, this study discusses its impact mechanism on enterprise R&D cooperation, including the impact on the intensity and breadth of R&D cooperation. The study further examines the regulatory effect of organizational inertia on enterprise digital and R&D cooperation from two aspects: resource rigidity and routine rigidity. It emphasizes the significance of the digital literacy of employees in enterprise digitalization and discusses the micromechanism of enterprise digitalization and enterprise R&D cooperation.
Purpose
The objectives of this study were to verify and group the unintended consequences (UCs) of performance evaluation systems (PESs) reported by empirical studies in the literature; and to determine whether these consequences manifest themselves at the managerial or the operational level of organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review of the literature was undertaken using the intervention instrument Knowledge Development Process-Constructivist. In total, 33 scientifically relevant empirical articles were selected from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, representative of the theme of PESs’ UCs. The treatment of the data was due to critical reflection on the findings, synthesized in a literature map.
Findings
The study identified 24 UCs, most of which were negative. These were divided into two categories: feelings/emotions and attitudes/implications. Most conscious attitudes manifested themselves at the managerial level, whereas the unconscious ones appeared at the operational level. It was established that employees are more likely to be induced to adopt dysfunctional behaviours. Social aspects that interact with a PES, such as contextual and cultural factors, are fundamental for understanding how PES’s UCs occur.
Originality/value
The study provides insights for researchers and professionals in the field of performance evaluation who wish to delve deeper into the theme of UCs, based on the proposed structure of a literature map that consists of dividing consequences into feelings and attitudes; checking the occurrence level (managerial or operational); and identifying the nature of the attitude, whether it is conscious or unconscious.
Electronic monitoring is more and more widespread and affects many employees around the globe. The current meta-analysis collected data of 70 independent samples (with 233 effect sizes) to estimate the effect of electronic monitoring on job satisfaction, stress, performance, and CWB. A random-effects model indicated a small negative effect of monitoring on job satisfaction, r = −0.10. There was a small positive effect on stress, r = .11, and on CWB, r = .09, but not on performance, r = −0.01. Even though the effects of monitoring on employees’ job satisfaction and stress are small, they have probably a severe negative impact due to long-term use of electronic monitoring. The non-existing relationship of monitoring with performance but positive relationship with CWB questions the benefits of electronic monitoring for organizations. In addition, several moderators are examined and the results are discussed.
The digitalisation of business processes has led to the availability of (big) data which increasingly allows firms to analyse their workforce using HR analytics. On the basis of a cross‐national multi‐level analysis and a data set that covers more than 20,000 firms in all member states of the European Union we investigate the reasons why some firms make use of human resource (HR) analytics to monitor employee performance while others refrain from doing so. We show that the use of HR analytics depends upon firm characteristics as well as contextual factors. In terms of firm characteristics, we find that firms require the structural and managerial capability to make use of HR analytics. For contextual factors, our findings show that some market factors motivate firms to make use of HR analytics while the institutional, that is, juridico‐political, and cultural environment in which firms are embedded influences firms' opportunities to use HR analytics.
Drawing on the moral exclusion theory and resource allocation perspective, we examine the association between supervisor perception of subordinate performance and abusive supervision (AS), and the interaction effects of a supervisor’s need for achievement and second-level superiors’ close monitoring of first-line supervisors, as key boundary conditions for the performance-AS relationship. We conducted a time-lagged survey with 142 matched reports from supervisors and subordinates who had direct reporting relationships with the supervisors in the South Korea military. The results of this study indicate that subordinate performance, as rated by the supervisor, was negatively associated with AS. Furthermore, a supervisor’s need for achievement moderated the relationship between subordinate performance and AS, such that the relationship was more negative under a supervisor who had a higher need for achievement. In addition, second-level superiors’ close monitoring of first-line supervisors moderated the effect of the interaction of subordinate performance and a supervisor’s need for achievement on AS, such that the existing moderation effect of a supervisor’s need for achievement is more pronounced when supervisors are under high close monitoring by their superiors. Our investigation of antecedents of supervisor’s abusive behavior could help expand our previous knowledge regarding the mechanism of the performance-AS relationship.
This article contends that information security education, training and awareness programs can improve employee security behavior. Empirical studies have analyzed the direct effects of employee security training on security behavior without taking into account the mediating role of employee relations, monitoring, and accountability. Based on employee relations and accountability theories, this study proposes and tests a causal model that estimates the direct effect of employee security training on security behavior as well as its indirect effects as mediated by employee relations, monitoring, and accountability. The empirical analysis relies on a survey data from a cross section of employees from five major industry sectors and a structural equation modeling approach via SmartPLS 3.0. The results show that employee security training has indirect and significant effects on security behavior through its influence on employee relations, monitoring, and accountability. However, the result does not indicate direct and significant effect of security training on employee security behavior.
Electronic monitoring is more and more widespread and affects many employees around the globe. The current meta analysis collected data of 59 independent samples (with 223 effect sizes) to estimate the effect of electronic monitoring on job satisfaction, stress, and performance. A random-effects model indicated a small negative effect of monitoring on job satisfaction, r=-.09, and a small positive effect on stress, r=.12. There was no relationship with performance, r=-.01. Even if the effects of monitoring on job satisfaction and stress are small, taking the large number of employees who are monitored for several hours a day into account, these effects may have a severe and negative impact on employees’ well-being. Performance maintenance is the main justification for the use of electronic monitoring, but the non-existing relationship of monitoring with performance questions the validity of this justification.
Along with incentive schemes, another well-established way to align the interests of principals and agents and, consequently, to reduce and eliminate biases and errors is the practice of monitoring. Considering the monitoring of experts, we evaluate the introduction of the most recent monitoring technology in football, the virtual assistant referee (VAR). Focusing on the German Bundesliga and the Italian Serie A, we analyse whether VAR has changed referees’ decision-making behaviour and, in particular, whether this led to changes in referees’ well-documented preferential treatment of home teams. By doing so, we use the introduction of VAR as a natural experiment to examine whether VAR can help overcome inefficiencies in referees’ decision-making and whether it exposes any inefficiencies in the referee selection system. Ex ante (in-)efficiency would imply that few (many) changes in referee decisions are seen after the VAR introduction. Our results suggest, generally, that VAR impacts referees’ decision-making. We confirm current research and conclude that prior to the introduction of the VAR, the home team tends to be favoured with respect to awarded penalty kicks, red cards and the amount of added time in games containing either penalty kicks or red cards. However, because the home bias only partially decreased with the introduction of VAR, it seems that the bias emerges more as a result of the advantages of playing in one’s local surroundings than of the referees’ decisions. We further show that VAR interventions do not correlate with referees’ experience levels. Overall, these modest findings and even non-existent differences indicate that home bias occurs for reasons other than referees, suggesting that the process for training, promoting, and selecting referees at the highest league works well. Finally, our findings suggest that the VAR implementation is aimed at purposes other than classic agent monitoring.
Literature in the Performance Management (PM) field champions a shift to more continual forms of worker assessment. Advances in data analytic technologies are claimed to support such developments. However, critical literature finds that PM technologies induce malign consequences for workers and that unions should seek to organise an alternative agenda challenging employers. Based on findings from an action research project in retail and operations banking, the paper considers whether organising enables unions to curb PM technologies’ more malign features.
Purpose
This study forces respondents to tradeoff between invasive human resource practices and salary.
Design/methodology/approach
Respondents evaluated 16 calibration profiles to estimate a conjoint model among four categories: pre-employment, employment at the office, employment outside the office, and salary. Each profile included one level from the four categories.
Findings
In a study of mostly full-time employees, conditions at work were paramount. Salary was second followed closely by pre-employment monitoring. Monitoring outside of the office was a distance last.
Practical implications
In a tight employment market, salary may not be the deciding selection factor for employment.
Originality/value
Employee monitoring is advancing dramatically and making human resource activities commonplace and invasive. This study forces respondents to confront these practices and determine whether salary can compensate for their acceptance.
Digital developments and changes in the production, supply chain and logistics sector as well as specific concepts like automation and Industry 4.0 or the Internet of Things are omnipresent. Especially the human role in such settings experiences important changes, which has not been adequately addressed in research yet. This introduction chapter contains an overview of elements encountered in digitalization processes in order to ensure sustainable work environments and efficient Human-Computer Interaction settings for the benefit of workers and organizations. Thus, it is the aim of this chapter to provide a structured synopsis to consider the human factor in analyzing digital work processes. This synopsis is aligned with typical workflow developments in digitalization projects and can be transferred to different work settings in supply chains. Finally, we outline the chapter structure of this book within four thematic sections in order to provide a joint storyline on investigating the human factor in digital supply chains.
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison project was based on three central assumptions: the omnipresence of the “watcher”; the universal visibility of objects of surveillance; and the assumption, by the “watched,” that they are under constant observation. While the metaphor of the panopticon, following Michel Foucault’s work, was often applied to workplace and workplace surveillance to highlight the “disciplining” power of the supervisor’s “gaze,” this paper argues that it is only with the recent advent of digital employee monitoring technology that the workplace is becoming truly “panoptic.” With modern electronic means of surveillance, the supervisor is always “looking”—even when not physically present or not actually watching employees—as all worker actions and movements may now be recorded and analyzed (in real time or at any time in the future). This paper argues that the modern workplace approximates Bentham’s panoptic prison much more than the “traditional” workplace ever did and examines the implications of this fundamental historical change in the paradigm of employee monitoring for power relations in the modern workplace.
Electronic Performance Monitoring (EPM) refers to the computerized collection, storage, analysis, and reporting of information in the work context. Based on a literature review, we argue that the use of physiological measurement methods in the research field of electronic performance monitoring (EPM) should be considered more frequently in future studies. Analyses of the extant literature revealed that pulse rate, cheek-skin-temperature, blood pressure, and inter-heartbeat-latency measurements have been the only physiological measurement methods used to investigate EPM the outcomes stress and arousal, and that these few methods have been used in a very limited number of studies only. Most studies focused on retrospective measurement methods, predominantly survey. As the consequences of EPM application are known to be significantly related to employee reactions, including those related to the nervous system, application of physiological measurement methods promises to deliver novel research findings.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between hybrid HR systems in call centers and their effect on workers' performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on a sample of 337 call center operator-supervisor dyads, the authors analyzed how the joint perceptions of monitoring and high-performance work systems (HPWS) are associated with workers' authenticity to explain performance, rated by supervisors.
Findings
The authors found that when monitoring is perceived as low, HPWS is not associated with authenticity, suggesting that it requires the joint effect of monitoring and HPWS to communicate HR management priorities in call centers. In addition, the authors found that high ratings of monitoring combined with low perceptions of HPWS were associated with the lowest levels of authenticity, whereas the highest levels of authenticity at work were found when high monitoring was combined with high HPWS. The results supported a conditional indirect effect through authenticity to explain when and how hybrid HR systems are associated with better supervisor-rated performance.
Originality/value
This is the first study to test the interaction effects between HPWS and monitoring practices to explain authenticity as a key strategic component of performance in call centers.
The goal of this paper is to develop an empirically-grounded framework to analyze how new technologies, particularly those used in the realm of datafication, alter or expand traditional organizational control configurations. Datafication technologies for employee-related data-gathering, analysis, interpretation and learning are increasingly applied in the workplace. Yet there remains a lack of detailed insight regarding the effects of these technologies on traditional control. To convey a better understanding of such datafication technologies in employee management and control, we employed a three-step, exploratory, multi-method morphological analysis. In step 1, we developed a framework based on twenty-six semi-structured interviews with technological experts. In step 2, we refined and redefined the framework in four workshops, conducted with scholars specializing in topics that emerged in step 1. In step 3, we evaluated and validated the framework using potential and actual users of datafication technology controls. As a result, our refined and validated "Datafication Technology Control Configurations" (DTCC) framework comprises eleven technology control dimensions and thirty-six technology control elements, offering the first insights into how datafication technologies can change our understanding of traditional control configurations.
A significant recent technological development concerns the automation of knowledge and service work as a result of advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its sub-fields. We use the term Intelligent Automation to describe this phenomenon. This development presents organisations with a new strategic opportunity to increase business value. However, academic research contributions that examine these developments are spread across a wide range of scholarly disciplines resulting in a lack of consensus regarding key findings and implications. We conduct the first interdisciplinary literature review that systematically characterises the intellectual state and development of Intelligent Automation technologies in the knowledge and service sectors. Based on this review, we provide three significant contributions. First, we conceptualise Intelligent Automation and its associated technologies. Second, we provide a business value-based model of Intelligent Automation for knowledge and service work and identify twelve research gaps that hinder a complete understanding of the business value realisation process. Third, we provide a research agenda to address these gaps.
Research dealing with various aspects of* the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985,
1987) is reviewed, and some unresolved issues are discussed. In broad terms, the theory is
found to be well supported by empirical evidence. Intentions to perform behaviors of different
kinds can be predicted with high accuracy from attitudes toward the behavior, subjective
norms, and perceived behavioral control; and these intentions, together with perceptions of
behavioral control, account for considerable variance in actual behavior. Attitudes, subjective
norms, and perceived behavioral control are shown to be related to appropriate sets of salient
behavioral, normative, and control beliefs about the behavior, but the exact nature of these
relations is still uncertain. Expectancy value formulations are found to be only partly
successful in dealing with these relations. Optimal rescaling of expectancy and value
measures is offered as a means of dealing with measurement limitations. Finally, inclusion of
past behavior in the prediction equation is shown to provide a means of testing the theory*s
sufficiency, another issue that remains unresolved. The limited available evidence concerning
this question shows that the theory is predicting behavior quite well in comparison to the
ceiling imposed by behavioral reliability.
Available at: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/18400/1/Jeske_Santuzzi_2014_IJWC_final_proof.pdf
The present study examined whether the presence of electronic performance monitoring at work would yield lower perceptions of control, job satisfaction, and commitment among part-time employees. This group of employees has not been traditionally examined in electronic monitoring research. We also tested whether the presence of electronic performance monitoring indirectly decreases citizenship behaviours and increases turnover behaviours through perceived control, satisfaction, and commitment. The sample included 208 students who worked part-time (no more than 30 hours per week). The data were collected using a two-part survey which assessed job attitudes, perceived control, intentions and behaviours, as well as type of monitoring being used in the workplace. The presence of electronic performance monitoring had a significant negative relationship with perceived control and job attitudes. Electronic monitoring indirectly predicted more self-reported turnover behaviour through perceived control, job attitudes, and intentions. The results suggest that monitoring might be an important situational factor that negatively influences employee attitudes and behaviours. The findings suggest that lower working hours within the organisation do not necessarily inure these employees to the effects of monitoring compared to their full-time colleagues, particularly when the performance standards are similarly demanding.
Although prior literature reveals that loneliness is a pervasive problem among adults, little research has evaluated the impact of loneliness in the workplace. Given that workplace relationships underlie many important organizational phenomena, it is important to understand whether and how workplace loneliness affects employee behavior. Based on the social exchange model, we hypothesize that in comparison with their non-lonely counterparts, lonely employees will experience lower quality leader‐member and organization‐member exchanges at work such that they will tend to be worse at in-role and extra-role workplace functions. Drawing on the results of our survey of schoolteachers, we present findings to support our hypotheses.
Despite the integration of telephone and VDU technologies, call centres are not uniform in terms of work organization. It is suggested that diversity can best be understood by reference to a range of quantitative and qualitative characteristics. Consequently, perspectives that treat all call centres as if they were the same hybrids of customization and routinization are rejected, along with over-optimistic interpretations of labour control over work organization. Empirical evidence from nine 'workflows' in two call centres - an established financial sector organization and a rapidly growing outsourced operation - provide excellent grounds for an examination of similarity and difference. A picture emerges of workflows which are volume-driven and routinized, involving low levels of employee discretion, and, by contrast, those less dominated by quantitative criteria offering higher levels of operator discretion and an emphasis on the quality of customer service. Despite these distinctions, larger numbers of operators report an experience of work which is driven by quantitative imperatives, most manifest in the pervasive imple- mentation of targets. Targets are also used increasingly to assess and mould the quality of the call centre operator's interaction with the customer. Overall, the evi- dence casts doubt on the optimistic perspective that call centre work, in time, will come to resemble 'knowledge work'.
As a form of performance monitoring, electronic performance monitoring (EPM) offers the opportunity for unobtrusive and continuous performance data gathering. These strengths can also make EPM stressful and threatening. Many features of performance evaluation systems, including the organizational purposes for which they are used, can affect employee attitudes. We explored the relationships among the perceived purpose of EPM and an array of job attitudes, including fairness, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and felt obligation to reciprocate. Results indicate that when monitoring is viewed as developmental, it is judged as fairer than when it is perceived as a deterrent to future behavior and is also associated with higher levels of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and felt obligation. These findings suggest that employees will respond more positively to EPM when managers and human resource development professionals carefully frame the reasons for monitoring and feedback in constructive, developmental terms.
This paper examines the self‐measured psychosocial work environment among employees working in six Icelandic companies, having similar jobs. Some are surveilled by electronic performance monitoring (EPM) technology and some are not. We find that employees working under EPM technology reported a worse psychosocial work environment than their colleagues.
The assumption that job satisfaction and job performance are related has much intuitive appeal, despite the fact that reviewers of this literature have concluded there is no strong pervasive relation between these two variables. The present meta-analytic study demonstrates that (a) the best estimate of the true population correlation between satisfaction and performance is relatively low (.17); (b) much of the variability in results obtained in previous research has been due to the use of small sample sizes, whereas unreliable measurement of the satisfaction and performance constructs has contributed relatively little to this observed variability in correlations; and (c) nine research design characteristics of a study are only modestly related to the magnitude of the satisfaction-performance correlation that will be obtained. In view of these findings, some of the major substantive and research implications of the job satisfaction-job performance relation are discussed.
To date, academic studies of the call centre ‘sector’ remain limited in scope. Here the authors attempt to remedy that omission by analysing the recent and spectacular growth of call centres in the UK, drawing on a wide variety of sources, including two extensive surveys of developments in Scotland during 1997.
This study examines the impact of transformational leader behaviors on organizational citizenship behaviors, and the potential mediating role played by subordinates' trust and satisfaction in that process. Measures of six transformational leader behaviors (Articulating a Vision, Providing an Appropriate Model, Fostering the Acceptance of Group Goals, High Performance Expectations, Individualized Support, and Intellectual Stimulation), one transactional leader behavior (Contingent Reward Behavior), employees' trust in their leader, and satisfaction were obtained from 988 exempt employees of a large petrochemical company. Matching evaluations of five citizenship behaviors of these employees (Altruism, Conscientiousness, Courtesy, Civic Virtue, and Sportsmanship) were obtained from their supervisors. In order to determine whether transformational behaviors augment the impact of transactional behaviors, their effects on followers' trust, satisfaction, and citizenship behaviors were examined in the context of the effect of transactional leader behaviors on these same variables. The results indicate that the effects of the transformational leader behaviors on citizenship behaviors are indirect, rather than direct, in that they are mediated by followers' trust in their leaders. Moreover, these results were found not to be wholly attributable to the effects of common method biases. The implications of these findings for future research on transformational leader behaviors, trust, and organizational citizenship behavior are then discussed.
The authors tested the generalizability of J. P. Meyer and N. J Allen's (1991) 3-component model of organizational commitment to the domain of occupational commitment. Measures of affective, continuance, and normative commitment to occupation were developed and used to test hypotheses concerning their differential relations with antecedent and consequence variables. Confirmatory factor analyses conducted on data collected from samples of student and registered nurses revealed that the 3 component measures of occupational commitment were distinguishable from one another and from measures of the 3 components of organizational commitment. Results of correlation and regression analyses were generally consistent with predictions made on the basis of the 3-component model and demonstrated that occupational and organizational commitment contribute independently to the prediction of professional activity and work behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Applied Psychology is the property of American Psychological Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
The definition of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has evolved from one in which the behavior is unrewarded to one in which rewards play a significant role. As a result, little is known about mechanisms that sustain unrewarded OCB. We used the theory of other orientation to examine 2 mechanisms based on the norm of reciprocity: the obligation to reciprocate the benefits already received from another ("paying you back") and the expected reciprocity that one's actions will stimulate future benefits from another ("paying me forward"). We propose that these mechanisms are more or less influential depending on one's motivational orientation. In 3 experiments using both trait and state indicators of other orientation, we found that the prosocial behavior of individuals higher in other orientation was more strongly influenced by the obligation to reciprocate and less affected by the expectation of reciprocity.
Researchers have discovered inconsistent relationships between prosocial motives and citizenship behaviors. We draw on impression management theory to propose that impression management motives strengthen the association between prosocial motives and affiliative citizenship by encouraging employees to express citizenship in ways that both "do good" and "look good." We report 2 studies that examine the interactions of prosocial and impression management motives as predictors of affiliative citizenship using multisource data from 2 different field samples. Across the 2 studies, we find positive interactions between prosocial and impression management motives as predictors of affiliative citizenship behaviors directed toward other people (helping and courtesy) and the organization (initiative). Study 2 also shows that only prosocial motives predict voice-a challenging citizenship behavior. Our results suggest that employees who are both good soldiers and good actors are most likely to emerge as good citizens in promoting the status quo.
A qualitative and quantitative review of the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance is provided. The qualitative review is organized around 7 models that characterize past research on the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Although some models have received more support than have others, research has not provided conclusive confirmation or disconfirmation of any model, partly because of a lack of assimilation and integration in the literature. Research devoted to testing these models waned following 2 meta-analyses of the job satisfaction-job performance relationship. Because of limitations in these prior analyses and the misinterpretation of their findings, a new meta-analysis was conducted on 312 samples with a combined N of 54,417. The mean true correlation between overall job satisfaction and job performance was estimated to be .30. In light of these results and the qualitative review, an agenda for future research on the satisfaction-performance relationship is provided.
To examine the association between work stress, according to the job strain model and the effort-reward imbalance model, and the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
Prospective cohort study. Baseline examination in 1973 determined cases of cardiovascular disease, behavioural and biological risks, and stressful characteristics of work. Biological risks were measured at 5 year and 10 year follow up.
Staff of a company in the metal industry in Finland.
812 employees (545 men, 267 women) who were free from cardiovascular diseases at baseline.
Cardiovascular mortality 1973-2001 from the national mortality register.
Mean length of follow up was 25.6 years. After adjustment for age and sex, employees with high job strain, a combination of high demands at work and low job control, had a 2.2-fold (95% confidence interval 1.2 to 4.2) cardiovascular mortality risk compared with their colleagues with low job strain. The corresponding risk ratio for employees with effort-reward imbalance (low salary, lack of social approval, and few career opportunities relative to efforts required at work) was 2.4 (1.3 to 4.4). These ratios remained significant after additional adjustment for occupational group and biological and behavioural risks at baseline. High job strain was associated with increased serum total cholesterol at the 5 year follow up. Effort-reward imbalance predicted increased body mass index at the 10 year follow up.
High job strain and effort-reward imbalance seem to increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality. The evidence from industrial employees suggests that attention should be paid to the prevention of work stress.
The design and implementation of computer-based work monitoring systems can result in changes in the organization, job and task. Electronic performance monitoring (EPM) systems are one type of change based on principles of work simplification and work rationalization. In this new work arrangement, control and coordination functions are allocated to the computer. The supervisor becomes a monitor of information and primarily provides negative performance feedback to the employee. The employee is constrained in his/her ability to use either job resources or social resources to meet the greater demands resulting from the system controlling the pace of work. It is proposed that these work arrangements provoke stress responses in employees that can result in short-term illness and potentially long-term changes in health status. Information enriched work environments are proposed as an alternative. These new work arrangements could improve job resources and social resources to manage job demands and reduce the potentially damaging stress responses. To provide a frame of reference we focus on the impact of EPM systems on the organizational and job elements involved in provoking individual stress responses. The impact of EPM systems on individual health is described using a psychosocial stress framework. Ergonomics interventions discussed include: participation in the design process; allocation of control and coordination functions between the computer and the employee; development of feedback systems; and work measurement and the development of performance appraisal systems.
Despite the fact that several studies have investigated the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and performance appraisal ratings, the vast majority of these studies have been cross-sectional, correlational investigations conducted in organizational settings that do not allow researchers to establish the causal nature of this relationship. To address this lack of knowledge regarding causality, the authors conducted 2 studies designed to investigate the effects of task performance, helping behavior, voice, and organizational loyalty on performance appraisal evaluations. Findings demonstrated that each of these forms of behavior has significant effects on performance evaluation decisions and suggest that additional attention should be directed at both voice and organizational loyalty as important forms of citizenship behavior aimed at the organization.
This study provides a preliminary test of a model proposed by Sutton and Kahn (1986). In the model, the ability to understand, predict, and control events in the work environment can reduce the potential adverse effects generally associated with certain work conditions. Using a sample of physicians, dentists, and nurses (N = 206) from a large naval medical hospital, the present study examined the moderating effects of understandable, predictable, and controllable work situations on the relationship between perceived role stress, satisfaction, and psychological well-being. Under- standing and control were found to have moderating effects on the relationship between perceived stress and satisfaction. Understanding, prediction, and control were found to have direct relation- ships with perceived stress, but only control had a significant direct relationship with satisfaction. None of these variables were found to have significant direct relationships with psychological well-being.
Objective: To examine the association between work stress, according to the job strain model and the effort-reward imbalance model, and the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. Design: Prospective cohort study. Baseline examination in 1973 determined cases of cardiovascular disease, behavioural and biological risks, and stressful characteristics of work. Biological risks were measured at 5 year and 10 year follow up. Setting: Staff of a company in the metal industry in Finland. Participants: 812 employees (545 men, 267 women) who were free from cardiovascular diseases at baseline. Main outcome measure: Cardiovascular mortality 1973-2001 from the national mortality register. Results: Mean length of follow up was 25.6 years. After adjustment for age and sex, employees with high job strain, a combination of high demands at work and low job control, had a 2.2-fold (95% confidence interval 1.2 to 4.2) cardiovascular mortality risk compared with their colleagues with low job strain. The corresponding risk ratio for employees with effort-reward imbalance (low salary, lack of social approval, and few career opportunities relative to efforts required at work) was 2.4 (1.3 to 4.4). These ratios remained significant after additional adjustment for occupational group and biological and behavioural risks at baseline. High job strain was associated with increased serum total cholesterol at the 5 year follow up. Effort-reward imbalance predicted increased body mass index at the 10 year follow up. Conclusions: High job strain and effort-reward imbalance seem to increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality. The evidence from industrial employees suggests that attention should be paid to the prevention of work stress.
According to software vendors and consultants, Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) transform the nature, structure and management of work regardless of organisational context. This paper contests this technologically deterministic view of organisational change by demonstrating the role that discourse plays in the social construction of ERPs.
Workplace isolation has been recognized as a critical issue facing salespeople in field offices. Studies have recognized that field salespeople are physically and psychologically isolated, but there is little empirical research on the effects of perceived isolation on important job outcomes. One important issue that has yet to be considered is the effect of workplace isolation on trust in supervisors and coworkers. The current study uses a sample of pharmaceutical salespeople to replicate previous results pertaining to workplace isolation effects and to test an integrated model of workplace isolation, salesperson satisfaction, trust, organizational commitment, and overall job performance. The results reveal that perceptions of workplace isolation negatively affect trust in supervisors and coworkers and that the relationship between trust (in supervisors and coworkers) and organizational commitment is mediated by satisfaction with supervisors and coworkers. Further, the findings confirm previous research that indicates that organizational commitment is positively related to salesperson job performance.
An approach to electronic performance monitoring is developed that examines job design and worker stress theories and consequently defines the critical job elements of stress response in an electronic monitoring context. A framework for the evaluation of electronic performance monitoring systems is presented. A conceptual model is proposed that states that electronic performance monitoring has direct and indirect effects on worker stress. The indirect effects result from job design. The potential effects of electronic performance monitoring on three job design characteristics (job demands, job control, and social support) are examined in more detail.
A laboratory experiment was conducted to assess the effects of electronic monitoring on the quality and quantity of clerical task performance. A social information processing framework was used to develop predictions about task performance and the perceived importance of quality and quantity performance. Results generally supported the hypotheses: aspects of a task that were monitored were perceived as more important and the quantity of work output was affected. Exploratory analysis of task satisfaction and motivation also showed that these variables were affected by the monitoring manipulations.
This paper analyses a form of electronic surveillance in a call centre that was not automatically performed through or by information and communication technology but required the active involvement of peers to provide feedback on each other's work by using an online reporting tool. Increased surveillance led to a tightening of control over certain aspects of work as advisors modified their call‐handling practices. But surveillance was simultaneously undermined by technical and bureaucratic control linked to existing information systems, which affected the ability and availability of peers to perform monitoring. Electronic peer surveillance was also unable to provide objective information or unobtrusive control as performing and evaluating surveillance became a highly political and contested process. Various forms of resistance arose, which were not always directed at management, but were instead manifest through increased animosity between teams.
Individual differences such as personality and demographic factors have effects on how people react to Electronic Performance Monitoring (EPM), yet the literature on this aspect of electronic monitoring has been scattered. The present paper summarizes this body of empirical research and presents a framework for organizing current research findings based on two dimensions: the probability of successful work under the monitoring and the probability of accepting that the monitoring is of value. The framework also allows researchers to make predictions regarding additional individual difference variables. Managers may use this information to select employees who are likely to respond well to monitoring conditions and to structure monitoring procedures so that they are likely to be accepted by their employees with particular individual difference characteristics.
We examine the contingent impact of implementing an enterprise‐wide information technology system (Enterprise Resource Planning) on perceptions of work complexity in clerical, technical and managerial service sector jobs. Using matched and control samples of employee survey data, we compare pre‐ and post‐intervention perceptions of work complexity and importance of analytical skills across three hierarchical job levels: clerical, technical and managerial. We find that employees in clerical jobs, at the lowest level in the hierarchy, experience a significant increase in work complexity and need for analytical skills, whereas those in technical and managerial service jobs do not. Implications for theory, management of technology and employment policy are discussed.
An attitude scale to give an index of job satisfaction was constructed by a combination of Thurstone and Likert scaling methods. A corrected odd-even reliability coefficient of .87 was computed from scores obtained from a sample of 231 female office employees. Validity was investigated by comparing job satisfaction scores of two groups: (1) 40 students who had personnel jobs, and (2) 51 persons who did not. The mean for the personnel group was 76.9, and for the Non-Personnel group was 65.4. Correlation with the Hoppock Job Satisfaction Blank was
r = .92. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
[review] research that examines the effects of EPM [electronic performance monitoring] on employees and their supervisors / explores the relationships that studies have found between EPM, stress, and productivity in the workplace / describe the many variants of EPM systems and discuss the advantages and disadvantages associated with their use / focus on studies that have examined EPM and stress and explore potential mediators and moderators involved in the monitoring–stress connection / recommendations are offered to those who are considering introducing EPM in the workplace (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
review and integrate contemporary models of organizational withdrawal into basic developments in attitude-behavior theory and applied motivation theory / empirical data are reviewed to the extent that they contribute directly to the validity of these theoretical models / the empirical data reported in the many studies of absenteeism, tardiness, turnover, satisfaction, and related responses said to comprise the construct of organizational withdrawal will be reviewed briefly
presents a brief review of selected conceptual models of attitude formation, including theoretical models of attitude-behavior consistencies as well as selected empirical findings specifically relevant to job affect and job withdrawal / develop the concept of job withdrawal as a multifaceted response family and discuss the psychological functions of job withdrawal responses within a general model of job affect and job adaptation / consider the influence of alternative job opportunities on job affect and job behaviors as well as the moderating effect (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Compared 273 full-time, 158 part-time regular and 256 part-time irregular employees (mean age 33.6 yrs) on several organizationally relevant reactions and behaviors to investigate potential employment status differences (e.g., N. Logan et al; see record
1973-24017-001). Ss were administered a measure of cognitive and attitudinal variables and measures of job satisfaction. Performance and turnover data were also obtained. After controlling for demographics, it was found that there were mean differences between groups; however, no evidence was found for differences in how the various groups process organizational experience. Findings suggest the need to examine formal management policies and practices toward part-time employees. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
evaluated mood disturbance and musculoskeletal discomfort effects of the use of EPM [electronic performance monitoring] to enforce compliance with performance standards for a numeric data-entry task / the study focused on workers who had difficulty maintaining data-entry performance standards of greater than 200 keystrokes per minute and less than 6 errors per minute; that is, workers who were most likely to experience work overload and negative performance feedback under EPM work-management conditions / [Ss were 47 19–38-yr-old] female data-entry operators (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Describes the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) which is intended to (a) diagnose existing jobs to determine whether (and how) they might be redesigned to improve employee motivation and productivity and (b) evaluate the effects of job changes on employees. The instrument is based on a specific theory of how job design affects work motivation, and provides measures of (a) objective job dimensions, (b) individual psychological states resulting from these dimensions, (c) affective reactions of employees to the job and work setting, and (d) individual growth need strength (interpreted as the readiness of individuals to respond to "enriched" jobs). Reliability and validity data are summarized for 658 employees on 62 different jobs in 7 organizations who responded to a revised version of the instrument. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Substantial developments in new office technologies over the past two decades have dramatically transformed today's white-collar workplace. One of these developments, computer-based work monitoring, has enabled employers to continually or intermittently monitor employees in real time or on a delayed basis, with or without their knowledge or permission, at levels and in a manner previously unattainable. This introductory article to this special issue outlines the current status of computer monitoring in the U. S., delineates its major advantages and disadvantages, and provides examples of early research on the topic by the author and others. Factors likely to moderate the acceptance and effectiveness of computer monitoring systems are discussed and implications for work and social relationships in the workplace are considered. An overview of the four special issue articles reporting the results of experiments assessing the effects of computer monitoring on the performance of workers and supervisors is then provided.
Increases in the sophistication of workplace computerization has provided modern-day managers with superior tools, such as electronic performance monitoring (EPM), with which to supervise their employees. Expanding on studies by Aiello (e. g., Aiello, 1993), the present study aimed to examine EPM in a social facilitation framework, exploring not only the relationship with task performance and stress, but also with an individual's subjective mood state. Thirty-three female and 15 male university students were required to solve a series of anagrams via a purpose-built computer program. Both the difficulty of the anagrams (easy or difficult) and the presence of monitoring (present or absent) were varied for each participant. Results indicated that the visual presence of EPM resulted in an easy task being performed with greater proficiency and a difficult task being performed with less proficiency. When participants were attempting to solve an easy task, the presence of EPM resulted in a participant's mood state becoming significantly more positive; whereas when solving a difficult task, EPM caused a more negative mood state. Similarly, it was found that a higher level of subjective stress was experienced when EPM was present, as opposed to absent. when individuals were performing a difficult task. The implications for the workplace applications produced by this study are discussed.
The adaptation of lean techniques in public services is viewed as an innovative managerialist response to government demands for more efficient services amidst large reductions in public spending. This paper explores workers' experiences of the impact of lean on work organisation and control and provides new insights into developments within contemporary back office clerical work.
The effects of automated computer monitoring under different conditions of performance standards and reward were examined in two studies conducted in a simulated organization. In the first study, 37 computer operators were divided into six groups who worked for a 2-week period under different levels of performance standards. Individual keystrokes per hour and productive time was monitored by the computers for all of the groups (one group was a control group which was monitored but was unaware of the monitoring). Four of the six groups were assigned work standards, and performance against standards was also monitored for these four groups. Feedback reports on the monitored performance were available on demand at the individual consoles for those groups which were informed of the monitoring. The results showed that computer monitoring and feedback led to increased key rate compared to the control group which was not aware of monitoring. There was little effect of monitoring on work quality, satisfaction, and stress. In the second study, 24 operators worked for a 9-week period under various performance standards and rewards. Individual keystrokes per hour, productive time, and performance against standards were monitored by the computers for all workers. Feedback reports on performance against standards and rewards earned were available on demand at the individual consoles. The results revealed that the feedback from different combinations of standards and rewards had varying effects on performance, satisfaction, and stress. These effects, and the results from the first study, are discussed in terms of goal setting and expectancy theory.
The worker performing a monitored task and the social processes surrounding the task provide a basis for integrating psychological and sociological research on work performance monitoring and surveillance in call centres. Foci include individual boundaries, compliance and resistance, controlling the effects of monitoring, negotiated order, metacommunication, and social support.
Performance monitoring was reviewed from an organizational justice perspective. Several predictors of perceived fairness were derived from this review and tested using employed respondents from eight different organizational settings (N = 301). Analyses confirmed that the predictors accounted for significant variance in perceived fairness in both electronically monitored and traditionally monitored work environments. These predictors were labeled monitoring consistency, knowledge of performance from monitoring, monitoring control, and justifications for monitoring.
A hallmark of the emerging `information age' is the dramatic rise in expenditures by modern business enterprises on information technologies (IT). On account of these investments, senior managers anticipate gains in productivity, which are commensurate with the cost of modern IT and Information Systems. While the evolving capabilities of emerging IT are evident, the association between technological diffusion and increased productivity has not been readily demonstrated in terms of corporate repositioning or scholarly research findings. One possible source of this paradox is the absence or presence of Business Process Redesign in positioning the organization to assimilate and leverage technological innovation. This study empirically examines the nature and magnitude of relationships between IT diffusion, perceived productivity improvement, and process redesign. The findings suggest that process redesign and IT have a complex relationship with productivity, and that these can be represented by a mediating or moderating model for different technologies. The data, while exploratory, do suggest alternate ways to examine the productivity paradox.
This study provides a preliminary test of a model proposed by Sutton and Kahn (1986). In the model, the ability to understand, predict, and control events in the work environment can reduce the potential adverse effects generally associated with certain work conditions. Using a sample of physicians, dentists, and nurses (N = 206) from a large naval medical hospital, the present study examined the moderating effects of understandable, predictable, and controllable work situations on the relationship between perceived role stress, satisfaction, and psychological well-being. Understanding and control were found to have moderating effects on the relationship between perceived stress and satisfaction. Understanding, prediction, and control were found to have direct relationships with perceived stress, but only control had a significant direct relationship with satisfaction. None of these variables were found to have significant direct relationships with psychological well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
For researchers studying how people cope with job stress, a major empirical concern is the development of coping measures. This article presents construct validity evidence for three measures of coping behavior related to job stress: control, escape, and symptom management. The psychometric properties of the scales as well as preliminary evidence for construct validity support further use and evaluation of these coping scales. Measurement issues are identified, particularly the time-dependent nature of coping and the dilemma of multimethod assessment. Suggestions are offered for future coping scale development.