Ethical Issue in Business: Employee's Perception of Digital Reconnaissance at the Workplace

COMPUTING, ETHICS AND BUSINESS 1
ETHICAL ISSUE IN BUSINESS, CASE STUDY OF EMPLOYEE’S PERCEPTION OF
DIGITAL RECONNAISSANCE AT THE WORK PLACE
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Student’s Course
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Institutional Affiliation
The City and State
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COMPUTING, ETHICS AND BUSINESS 2
ETHICAL ISSUE IN BUSINESS, CASE STUDY OF EMPLOYEE’S PERCEPTION OF
DIGITAL RECONNAISSANCE AT THE WORK PLACE
Abstract
In the recent few years, the ever-increasing technology has brought about digital reconnaissance
and its improvement on a daily basis. Ball (2010) states digital reconnaissance studies scholars like David
Lyon (1994) or Clive Norris and Gary Armstrong (1999) have it that the state in which we live insecure
and uncertain environment and thus it makes digital reconnaissance a necessary tool for monitoring of
the various phenomenon that occur at work places, homes and anywhere. Rapid growth in technology is
taking digital reconnaissance to another level.
Digital reconnaissance techniques are most used in workplaces and organizations according to
past researches carried out on topics such as the uses of digital surveillance in the workplace, its impacts
on employees. However, past researches have contradicting views towards what employees say about the
existence of digital reconnaissance in their workplaces; this research will therefore concentrate in this
area.
Keywords
Digital reconnaissance, monitoring, workplace, employers and employees
Background
With the view of influencing, managing, directing, protecting people, governments and
organizations have adopted digital reconnaissance as the way forward to. The great communications
technology increase and its ever-growing impacts shows that workplaces regard digital reconnaissance as
one of their concerns that require crucial attention for the secure development of the organization. This
has been a concern in recent years and area of interest for many scholars. However, it has not been

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understood what the employees in workplaces have to say about digital reconnaissance significance as far
as work is monitoring and tracking is concerned.
Globally, the invisible revolution of digital investigation McNall and Roch (2009) and
renaissance of risk (beck, 1992) has been an input that is attaining a high degree of concern as the
involvement of humans in organizations have been transformed by the developments of new workplaces
and new practices of work (Kallinikos, 2003), which included the conditions of control mechanisms. The
work transformations affects the way discernibility along with the presence of workers (employees) is
structured and this causes an effect in the way work practices are structured.
Digital reconnaissance also known as e-Digital reconnaissance Alder et al. (2008) and electronic
monitoring (Ball & Margulis, 2011) has been adopted to use by many organizations in recent years
(Ledema & Rhodes, 2010). Many reasons and mainly for security of the workplace environment for both
the organization and employees, monitoring the activities of employees in workplaces have encouraged
the adoption of digital reconnaissance in organizations. In making decisions concerning employees, HR
departments use data gathered by surveillance methods to evaluate them. Employers make these
monitoring techniques of importance with reasons like improving the productivity and quality of work,
avoiding the misuse of resources that belong to the organization, and protecting the confidentiality of the
organizations among others. This however, has left the trust between the workers and their employers
being questioned because employees also have views towards the use digital reconnaissance in
workplaces (Subašić et al. 2011, p.170). The research will therefore seek to investigate the how digital
reconnaissance / e-digital reconnaissance or electronic monitoring affect the employees of an organization
in their work places.
Research Questions

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 How much awareness do employees have about the different types of digital
reconnaissance that the employers use in workplaces?
 How do digital reconnaissance techniques used affect employee work rate?
 What are the views that workers (employees) have concerning monitoring their actions
through digital reconnaissance?
Review of Literature
Digital reconnaissance involves electronic digital reconnaissance and electronic monitoring.
Electronic digital reconnaissance means a “keep watch” or monitoring electronically and therefore these
two terms monitoring and digital reconnaissance may be used to mean the same thing (Alge and Hansen
2014, p.209)
According to Chen et al. (2008), electronic digital reconnaissance refers to when an organization
involves the use information technology (IT) like computers, cameras to gather data that concerns to how
its workforce behave or perform at workplace. Digital reconnaissance was introduced in organizations by
employers to provide a safe working environment for its employees. Various types of digital
reconnaissance techniques is being used and implemented by employers to ensure asset protection from
both employees and shoplifters.
Digital reconnaissance is when the management is able to record hand keep track of how they
perform, behave and personalities according to Kidwell and Sprague (2009) digital reconnaissance have
emerged in recent years which has made it to become common in organizations which has made easy for
employers to track and monitor employees in the workplace.
When talking about digital reconnaissance from the workplace context, it is more than the use of
cameras that track employee’s movements within the organizations, because Digital reconnaissance can
also be done to track employees (workers) outside the organizations from different locations. This in the
recent time has been done by the use of drones. Developed organizations have devices that can track