Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance Research since “1984”: A Review and Agenda

Although monitoring or the observation of performance against some standard has long been recognized as a critical function of managers, the last quarter century has seen an explosion in the use of technologies as a means through which organizations can monitor their employees. Much progress has been made in our understanding of how such technologically driven approaches to monitoring have impacted workers in areas such as stress, task performance speed and quality, psychological control, security, fairness, and privacy. Given this accumulation of knowledge, the time is ripe for a review and integration of this body of work. In this chapter, we review this literature with an eye on the future as we chart a direction for future research.