Watched but Not Seen: Electronic Employee Monitoring as Workplace Imprisonment and Its Effect on Social Recognition

Electronic employee monitoring has strongly increased over the last decades. This article investigates to what extent electronic and non-electronic monitoring practices affect feelings of (mis)recognition both at the workplace and more widely in society. To better comprehend the effects of electronic monitoring, we use Noorda’s conception of ‘imprisonment’. Building on the argument that electronic monitoring resembles a situation of imprisonment, limiting workers’ liberty, the study proposes that it violates the human dignity of workers, triggering feelings of misrecognition not only in the workplace but also by society at large. Analyzing survey data on 3089 employees in the Netherlands the study finds that the more strongly employees are monitored by electronic devices, the stronger their feelings of workplace misrecognition. Moreover, electronic monitoring also affects broader feelings of societal recognition, both indirectly via workplace misrecognition, and directly. Human monitoring practices (by one’s supervisor or colleagues etc.) are not associated with feelings of workplace misrecognition.