Concluding Remarks


The recent increase in the use of electronic monitoring in the workplace raises a cluster of ethical issues and challenges us to think carefully about situations where the values of privacy, autonomy, and consent intersect. In this discussion, I have been concerned to underscore the importance of consent, a value that has tended to be underplayed in other academic discussions of electronic monitoring in the workplace. Surprisingly, it seems that arguments that emphasise the value of consent will do more to affect surveillance practices in the workplace than arguments that emphasise the values of privacy and autonomy. While I do not mean to rule out the bare possibility of some such arguments being successfully mounted, it would appear that arguments that emphasise the values of privacy and autonomy in the workplace do not lead to decisive conclusions. However, consideration of the value of consent leads to a very decisive conclusion: electronic monitoring in workplaces where employee consent is possible is unacceptable without that consent.

I have also been concerned, following an earlier work (Clarke, 2001), to exemplify the use of the doctrine of informed consent as a basis for the general analysis of consenting relations. The discussion has focused on employer-employee relationships in the private sector of capitalist economies. The ideas developed could be applied outside of this context, but I would urge anyone attempting to do this to proceed cautiously due to the range of complicating factors that emerge when we start examining other sorts of workplace relations.




Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace. Controversies and Solutions
Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace: Controversies and Solutions
ISBN: 1591404568
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 161

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