CAREER: Organizations, Technology, and Data about Workers

Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green OH

Investigators

Abstract

The widespread availability of the personal computer, local area networks, and the Internet in work organizations has fostered extraordinary growth in the collection of information about workers. Increasingly, organizations use networked computer systems in conjunction with specialized hardware and software to test, track, and monitor their employees. Wireless technologies even facilitate data collection on employees whose work takes them physically outside the work premises. Using technology to collect and process information about workers raises numerous value-laden questions. An organization's legal and financial needs may conflict with workers' autonomy, dignity, privacy, and trust in the organization. These opposing needs virtually guarantee conflict. The overarching goal of these efforts is to document how technology is and will be used to collect data about workers and to understand how these uses of technology shape the relationships among workers, managers, and organizations. The CAREER award will support a diverse set of research studies, curriculum development for undergraduate and graduate students, and the creation of publicly available resources to promote examination and awareness of organizational technology issues. The research will focus on individual attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Studies will assess these variables from the perspectives of both employees and managers. From both perspectives, the research will examine privacy beliefs, perceptions of control over personal and performance information, trust in the organization, and linkages of these factors to fairness beliefs. From the managerial perspective, the research will also assess managerial actions and decisions about worker data technology within an ethical decision-making framework. A third element in the research will contrast employee and manager belief systems. Results from these studies will contribute to development of a psychological framework about worker information. Finally, a three-year longitudinal study will examine the adoption and use of worker data technology in one organization, and its effects on managers, employees, and the organization. In addition to the survey methods typical to organizational research, the proposed projects will use qualitative methods including in-depth interviewing and ethnographic investigation of organizational technology use. The educational component of this CAREER award is symbiotic with the research. Ethical management of data about people, a cornerstone of research and practice in psychology, is under-emphasized in the curriculum (especially in undergraduate training). Since many psychology majors graduate into positions with responsibilities for managing data about people, relevant ethical training is needed. The principal investigator has both graduate and undergraduate teaching responsibilities, which provides the opportunity to develop and test teaching material and methods pertaining to the ethical handling of data about people. In addition to standard scholarly outlets, instruments, findings, and norms from the research studies together with materials from the curriculum development will serve as the basis for a web-based resource center. A toolkit of organizational assessments will be publicized to promote further research on worker data technology and related topics. Exercises, cases, and other curricular materials on ethical issues related to technology and privacy in the workplace will also be publicized.