Metaphoric and Theoretic Foundations


Metaphoric and Theoretic Foundations

This section of the chapter summarizes some theoretic and conceptual foundations for studying panoptic effects. The last section of the chapter will present new findings from a database collected by the first author some years ago, and then discuss some implications of these results.

Metaphoric

Botan (1996) and Botan and McCreadie (1990) have used the metaphor of a panopticon to discuss surveillance in the workplace. A panopticon is a prison or other highly controlled environment in which all parts of the interior are visible from a single point because a central tower is surrounded by a circular building comprised of individual cells that are open on both ends (Mack, 1969). On the inward face, each cell is open to observation from the tower, and on the outward face, it is open to the light. The effect is that each cell becomes a hollow shaft, illuminated from one end and open to observation on the other. Each cell is separated from each other cell by a solid wall so that occupants cannot communicate with each other. Windows in the central tower allow an observer to see clearly into each cell, but light is blocked within the central tower so that its occupants are invisible from the cells. Cell occupants are always exposed to observation, isolated from each other, and unable to know whether they are being observed .

The panopticon creates a power relationship of the sort with which communication scholars have become increasingly concerned . This specialized kind of relationship is based on the contrast between the visible and the invisible, the latter also referred to as unverifiable by Foucault (1977). In a panoptic relationship, cell occupants are vulnerable because they are visible, and that vulnerability is magnified by the invisibility of the observer. One of the effects of this relationship is that occupants have to act as if they are being watched, even when they are not.

The electronic panopticon is a metaphor used to describe how modern information technology is used today to impose the social power relationship described by Foucault on such dissimilar workplaces as data entry offices and the cabs of long distance truckers. Modern surveillance technology has thereby relieved those seeking greater power and control in the workplace of the need to construct special buildings and towers and has made it possible to extend panoptic relationships beyond the physical confines of a work site.

Theoretic

Among the many theories that could inform a study of workplace surveillance, the work of Raven (1993) is particularly well suited because it also provides a theoretic explanation for the breathtaking increases in electronic surveillance in the information workplace. This theory basically suggests that surveillance feeds on, or propagates, itself. Specifically, Raven and Kruglanski (1970) noted that one important aspect of French and Raven s earlier analysis is that when an influencing agent has coercive power and uses it, the agent in question will tend to diminish and distrust the target (Raven, 1993,p . 241). Raven explained that this is so because coercive power requires surveillance, compliance is attributed to the use of surveillance, and thus the target is judged as untrustworthy (p. 241). Raven (1993) also said that:

Having used coercive power, along with surveillance, the power holder attributes any successful influence to the power holder, rather than the target, tending thereby to further devalue and distrust the target. Further influence attempts will be even more coercive, more distrusting, and will tend to further devalue the target, while assuming greater power, and greater privileged status for the power holder. (Raven, 1993,p . 242)

Moving from this theoretic and metaphoric understanding of panoptic effects to a concrete study requires a more operational understanding of panoptic effects. Botan and McCreadie (1993) and Botan (1996) have discussed this at some length, so this chapter will offer only a very abbreviated review before moving on to discuss results from the study. This chapter reports previously unpublished data from a study the methodology, sampling, and statistical procedures of which are also discussed at length in Botan (1996).

Components of Panoptic Effect

How the panoptic effect works, and to what extent it works, is particular to each situation. An interaction of the following four elements is involved in each situation: (1) employee perception of being surveilled; (2) surveillance potential of the technology; (3) management policy; and (4) maturation .

Employees perceptions that they are being surveilled are the most essential of the four components and actually create the panoptic effect through the internalization of the relationship that Foucault discussed. There can be surveillance without employees being aware of it, but not a panoptic effect. It should be noted that even in the absence of surveillance a suspicion of being surveilled could generate some panoptic effect. The second component, surveillance potential of the technology, is an attribute of the technology itself and has four subcomponents: (a) how much the technology makes employees visible; (b) how much the technology keeps the surveilling authority invisible; (c) how detailed and permanent a record is produced [what Zuboff (1988) called textualizing]; and (d) how technologically driven the data analysis can be. These last two characteristics of surveillance potential are important because it is often the supervisory time and cost of analyzing data, rather than difficulty in collecting data, that determines surveillance use and effectiveness. Management policy determines when technology that can be used for surveillance actually will be. For example, Botan and McCreadie (1989) reviewed the Taylorist assumptions and policies that often lead supervisors to use new technology to commodify information by reducing jobs to their simplest and most repetitive level and to strive for more and more control in order to achieve this. The final component ” maturation of the particular work situation ” determines how effectively surveillance technology becomes integrated with management policy, a process that takes time (Smith, 1989). This fourth component is closely related to management policy and might be collapsed into it.

Internal and External Panoptic Effects

Panoptic effects can be both internal ” the realization of vulnerability because of the visibility-invisibility contrast ” and behavioral ” the social behaviors undertaken, or not undertaken, in response to that perceived vulnerability. Panoptic effects, then, begin with the internalizing of a new power relationship but also include stress, all the health ramifications associated with it, and other effects. Such other effects can include altered social relationships that can result both from the relative isolation often imposed by surveillance practices and from a subject s felt need to maintain aspects of privacy still under the control of the surveilled.

Effects include both those that are sought by the employer and those that are unexpected. Sought for effects, such as forcing employees to internalize a new power relationship, carry an element of intent with them, so the ethical and practical issues associated with them are relatively clear for all to see. Unexpected panoptic effects should not be relegated to a secondary priority, however, because they may accumulate, unseen and unchecked, until their social or economic ramifications can no longer be ignored.

A quantitative assessment of some of the major unintended effects of surveillance was the goal of Botan s 1996 article. This chapter seeks to both extend and balance those results with new quantitative findings and qualitative data that focus on the words, opinions , and feelings of surveilled employees. The next section reports and discusses these results.




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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