Employees' Attitudes and Perceptions Towards Electronic Monitoring Surveillance Affecting Employee Behavior: An Exploratory Evidence From the Airline Industry

Introduction

Electronic Monitoring, Surveillance (EMS) is contemplating a wider scope in the 21st century. This century is known as technology and automated century. Many researchers like (Aiello, 1993; Aiello and Svec, 1993; Vorvoreanu and Baton, 2000) propounded that for the last two decades the use of Electronic Monitoring Surveillance (EMS) at workplace gradually increased and its prevalence still rising in a good pace. Moreover, (Lane, 2003; Allen et al., 2007; Ball, 2010) postulated that the use of EMS in the organizations was enormous because it decline the cost involved in work activities and enhancing the organizations’ complexity. It is a considerable concern as technological and automated era are either a boon or bane for the society. This technology has some pros and cons, like EMS makes employers capable for trace and monitors the undesired behavior of their employees in the working premises. EMS could be referring as the use of the computerized mechanism in collecting, retaining, analyzing, and assimilating the information on employees’ behavior at the workplace.

Author (Wen et al. 2007) propounded that EMS is a controlling strategy which strengthen the organizations to monitor employees’ movement and provide reports about their mobility from the workplace. Furthermore, its use also explained for harnessing of technology in capacity to take photos of an employee’s screen at regular time intervals, provides the information to the employer regarding different websites employees were visiting, email content and confidential information they might probably disclose.

In this regard, American Management Association (2007) surveyed 304 organizations in the United States, which used EMS to check the behavior of their employees during their work hours. The survey results, revealed that 28 percent of the organizations terminated their employees for the inappropriate use of official email ids and other social media sites in official time, In addition to other reasons for employee’s termination include wrong or offensive language, violation of confidentiality rules, and breach of any company policy. Furthermore, 30 percent of organization terminated their employees’ job because of the wrong use of internet downloading or uploading of inappropriate content, use social networking sites during working hours, etc.

Ball (2010) reported that a little research had been conducted on the impact of EMS on work related dimensions such as attitude, trust among employee and employer relationship. Surprisingly in the middle of the last century, some researchers like (Strickland, 1958; Kruglanski, 1970) were proclaiming that minimum trust management demands high EMS and be elaborated by employees as managerial distrust and would led a negative impact on harmonious relationship among employees and employers . D’ Urso, (2006) postulated that viability of EMS in the advanced organization demanded further studies. Similarly, Ball (2010) noticed that minimum work had been considerate on the influence of EMS on prominent work associated attitude. In this study, the main intention was to analyze the employees’ attitude and perception towards EMS and its impact on their work behavior.