Ethics and a New Social Contract for Employee Surveillance


The Assurance Game allows a much richer ethical analysis than the pure conflict Panopticon model. Most obviously, although there are two equilibria , they are ethically very different. Both parties gain from moving from adverse to welcome surveillance. Nonetheless, there is no guarantee that the parties will cooperate. The model reveals two barriers to cooperation. First, the non-cooperative outcome is an equilibrium; it is not rational to cooperate unless one expects (enough) others to do likewise. Unilateral moves towards cooperation make one strictly worse off. Second, the payoffs are unequal , which raises questions of distributive justice and bargaining. As we shall see below, the situation calls for a social contract to address these problems, but gives us reasons to be optimistic that a social contract can support the cooperative outcome.

Coombs develops a set of helpful policy suggestions that fit our ethical analysis flowing from our general model. He reports some negative unintended consequences of the adverse surveillance equilibrium:

Heavily surveilled workers had a strong impression that management distrusted them, that surveillance was created as a way to set up employees for dismissal and that management treated them like children. Heavily surveilled workers had a reduced motivation to improve quantity or quality. (Coombs, 2003,p. 32)

He offers three policy strategies to reduce these adverse consequences for workers and the organization:

  1. A flexible employee surveillance policy allows workers to use e-mail and the Internet for personal use [outside of work hours or during breaks] rather than a blanket prohibition (p. 33).

  2. Most workers support some type of e-mail and Internet surveillance, and they should be involved in drafting the employee surveillance policies (p.33).

  3. Electronic surveillance policies must be communicated clearly to all employees. Organisations must move beyond legal cover (p. 33).

We can see that these policies amount to a social contract to secure cooperation. Instead of admonishing individual employees to unilaterally change behavior, these policies commit both employer and employee to new joint strategies. Notice how policy 3 moves from using employee uncertainty about policy to control employees (the mixed strategy in game 1) to eliminating uncertainty in favor of cooperation. Moreover, policies 1 and 2 address the distributive issues by reallocating time, resource use, and policy making power in the employees favor. Finally, our model supports optimism that new social contracts of this type will be relatively easy to introduce. Since one s expectations are focused on cooperation, it becomes the equilibrium strategy.




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

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net