Organizational Deviance and the Vicious Cycle of Monitoring

Organizations institute control systems like EPM to enforce performance and service standards and to decrease negative behaviours such as theft, absenteeism, or tardiness. Some sociological investigations of surveillance have suggested that monitoring will prevent any form of employee resistance because the panoptic gaze of monitoring forces adherence to behavioural norms (Fernie & Metcalf, 1998). For organizations, this means that monitoring can allow for effective use of supervisory resources. In fact, part of the lure of EPM is that it will free managers and supervisors from the daily drudgery of inspection and discipline ” they no longer have to worry about motivation problems, absence, and tardiness. EPM allows them to focus their efforts on setting goals and meeting performance and service targets. The irony, however, is that in practice; EPM can create more work for managers. The interpretation of statistics generated by EPM systems and the necessary disciplinary and coaching activities that result might mitigate any benefits that result. As all this occurs within an environment that by its very nature is characterized by mistrust , supervision can devolve into a series of punitive efforts aimed at maintaining quantitative standards. Furthermore, recent investigations suggest that employee resistance to monitoring might not be as futile as once thought.

Little research has investigated the role that control systems like EPM play in encouraging rather than deterring the type of deviant behaviours these systems are designed to prevent. However, it is entirely possible that control systems like EPM communicate distrust to employees (Westin, 1992). Feelings of distrust can lead to retaliation and deviance (Cialdini, 1996; Kruglanski, 1970). Kemper (1966) suggests that employees may engage in reciprocal deviance if they believe their employers have defaulted on their role obligations to them. Furthermore, Cialdini (1996) suggests that when employees perceive themselves engaging in the desired monitored behaviours, they attribute their behaviours to the monitoring and not to their own desire to perform effectively. As a consequence, employees may be more likely to engage in undesirable behaviours when they can get away with it. At the same time, supervisors are more likely to attribute positive employee behaviours to the monitoring and ignore the fact that employees might have performed effectively in the absence of monitoring. To supervisors, this belief reinforces the need for monitoring and might even spur the desire to expand monitoring efforts.

Indeed, recent qualitative evidence (Bain & Taylor, 2000) suggests that invasive forms of electronic monitoring might actually serve as a catalyst for employee resistance. Specifically, Bain and Taylor (2000) found that invasive monitoring actually led employees to search for and exploit gaps in the monitoring system. For example, they found that employees took advantage of opportunities to engage in conversation with their colleagues by pretending to be taking calls. Deutsch-Salamon and Robinson (2002) present further evidence to suggest that monitoring can lead to deviance. These researchers examined over 3,600 employees working in 88 locations of a major retail organization that engaged in electronic monitoring activities. All locations had the same control and surveillance systems in place to control theft and absenteeism. Results indicated that employees who worked in locations that had higher expressed levels of trust in management ” a high trust climate ” exhibited higher responsibility norms and less deviance (e.g., property and production losses). The researchers concluded that managers should consider refocusing their efforts away from monitoring and control, and move toward fostering a trust climate to reduce deviance. The interesting thing to note is that the researchers do not state that all forms of electronic monitoring need to be eliminated. Rather, they suggest that monitoring efforts can co-exist successfully with employee desires for respect and trust. In other words, some level of monitoring will be accepted, as long as employees feel that their employers trust and respect them. Unfortunately, though, organizations that engage in EPM can get caught in a vicious cycle of monitoring that is hard to break ( Figure 2).

Figure 2: Vicious cycle of monitoring

Rather than seek out the source of the problem, organizations often prefer to attack the symptoms. It is easier to implement electronic monitoring in response to deviant behaviour (e.g., slacking off, absenteeism) than to root out the cause of these behaviours in the first place. But, the implementation of electronic monitoring practices sends a strong message to all employees, not just the ones who are engaging in deviance. The message is clear: employees are not trusted. Decreased trust, coupled with an electronic monitoring system that violates boundaries and triggers privacy and fairness concerns, might lead to a decrease in organizational commitment. Employees who do not feel trusted by their employers and who are not committed to the organization might in turn be more likely to leave. In fact, alarmingly high levels of turnover have been reported among monitored employees in some organizations. Recent estimates suggest that turnover rates range from 30% to 60% (Adler et al., 2001). With increased turnover comes the need to establish stability and maintain control. This is often accomplished by increasing the degree of monitoring, hence perpetuating the vicious cycle.

How can organizations break out of this cycle? There is no easy solution to this problem because EPM can have benefits for employees. The fact that employee performance data is collected and stored will lead to more objective, fact-based performance appraisals. In fact, Neihoff and Moorman (1993) found that employees did perceive continuous monitoring to be more fair because it led to more accurate feedback and appraisals . However, we know that creating and maintaining a climate of trust can make a difference (Deutsch-Salamon & Robinson, 2002; Westin, 1992). We also know that designing EPM systems with privacy and fairness safeguards in place will lead to somewhat more positive outcomes for employees (Alge, 2001; Zweig & Webster, 2002). But until we can define the line between monitoring practices that do and do not violate people s psychological boundaries, organizations will continue to experience the long- term negative effects of monitoring ” stress, burnout, deviance, and turnover. As indicated earlier, future research must identify the boundaries around acceptable versus unacceptable monitoring practices, and also examine the role of trust in mitigating or exacerbating boundary violations. Organizations must stop looking at EPM as the magic bullet for solving disciplinary problems and for increasing performance.

What if they don t? Beyond the negative effects of monitoring highlighted earlier in this chapter, if recent trends for increased monitoring continue unabated, we risk an even greater deterioration of privacy in the workplace and the emergence of fairness as the most important concern for employees.