Analyzing Employee Monitoring: Economic and Ethical Concerns in IT

This report examines the ethical and economic issues surrounding employee monitoring in the information technology sector, where organizations collect vast amounts of employee and customer data. It addresses the extent to which management should monitor employee emails, website visits, and overall performance through methods like keystroke tracking. The report discusses the appropriate use of collected data, explores the necessity of electronically shredding email traces, and identifies circumstances under which distributing website visitor information is acceptable. The analysis aims to strike a balance between organizational productivity, security, and employee privacy, while adhering to ethical standards and legal requirements, utilizing credible academic and industry sources.

Running head: ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEM
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Executive Summary
The aim of this report will be to discuss about the topic which states that the organizations
from information and technology sector enables the business houses to easily collect large
amounts of information about employees along with customers or visitors that results in
many issues. These issues may involve from economic or ethical concerns. The aim of this
report will be to address the questions, which says to what extent should management of
these companies monitor the emails of their employees, along with monitoring their visit on a
particular website in a single day. Apart from these, the extent that the management should
monitor employee performance will also be discussed in this report. For example, using
different software to track the keystrokes per hour or some other unit of time by the
management of the organizations need to be monitored by the management of these
information and technology organizations. The process of using all these collected data will
also be discussed in this report. Whether the companies should use software to electronically
shred all traces of e-mail or not will be laid in this report, along with the identification of the
circumstances and appropriateness for a company to distribute information collected about
the people who visit its website will be discussed in this report.
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Meaning of Information Technology.........................................................................................3
Access and Monitoring of E-mail Id’s of the Employees..........................................................4
Monitor the Websites.................................................................................................................6
Monitoring the Employee Performances...................................................................................8
Necessary Steps need to be followed.......................................................................................10
Circumstances..........................................................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
Reference..................................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
The purpose of this report will be to discuss about the topic which states that the
organizations from information and technology sector enables the business houses to easily
collect large amounts of information about employees along with customers or visitors that
results in many issues. These issues may involve from economic or ethical concerns. The aim
of this report will be to address the questions, which says to what extent should management
of these companies monitor the emails of their employees, along with monitoring their visit
on a particular website in a single day. Apart from these, the extent that the management
should monitor employee performance will also be discussed in this report. For example,
using different software to track the keystrokes per hour or some other unit of time by the
management of the organizations need to be monitored by the management of these
information and technology organizations. The process of using all these collected data will
also be discussed in this report. Whether the companies should use software to electronically
shred all traces of e-mail or not will be laid in this report, along with the identification of the
circumstances and appropriateness for a company to distribute information collected about
the people who visit its website will be discussed in this report.
Meaning of Information Technology
The term information technology can be defined as the study or usage of the systems
for retrieving, storing and sending information mainly by using computers and
telecommunications. In other words, it can be said that the term information technology is the
usage of any kind of storage, computers, infrastructure, networking and processes in order to
create, process, store, secure and exchange electronic data in all forms. The usage of different
information technology platforms for commercial purposes surrounds both telephony and
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computer technology. Organizations from this field or sector take the advantage of using
different platforms and shapes of the field of information technology according to the market
and business requirements. It can also be defined as the learning, design, improvement,
implementation, help and management of information systems which are totally based on
computers. These mainly involve computer hardware and software applications. For example,
Adobe Inc., which is an American computer software organizations having its presence
globally. They are providing different kinds of services from the year of 1982. The main
focus of this organization is to create multimedia along with creative software products,
which includes the recent vision on the digital marketing software field. Adobe surpassed
Oracle on 28th January of this year only to accomplish the second highest market
capitalization for a software organization globally (Adobe.com 2020).
Access and Monitoring of E-mail Id’s of the Employees
Almost all the employees in most of the business entities related to information
technology background provide access to a new or fresh e-mail id that is used by the
employees in order to send official messages and to interact with peers, colleagues and higher
authorities, along with other people who are associated with that company, like the
shareholders, suppliers, advertisers and last but not the least, the clients or the customers, who
directly or indirectly decides the performance level of the employees, and this part will be
discussed later in this paper. It has been found that official mails are also used by some
employees for illegal purposes, and all these unethical practices later hampers the
productivity and the overall performance of that particular organization. Market share along
with revenue earning is hampered due to occurrences of these illegal and unethical practices.
Legal issues may also have to face in case of occurrence of these issues like sending and
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receiving of confidential data related to the organization and its clients, apart from using the
official e-mail id for personal purposes (Aguboshim and Ezeasomba 2019).
On the other hand, it can be said in this context that this system of collection of data
like total working hours of number of hours spent by a particular employee on visiting other
websites apart from the their working websites are performed by many business houses
around the world. These help them to review the performances of those employees and assess
them according to their performances. The human resource system gets to know about the
detailed report and decides with the higher authority of a particular company about the
performance appraisal of those employees. All these occurrences made the task of the human
resource department of an organization easy to analyse the performances of their employees
and decides with the management whether to five promotion to a particular employee or
whether to terminate that employee. So, it can be said that the management of organizations
from information technology background need to monitor the e-mail of their employees by
taking the help of software that will possess the power to inspect every message that will be
sent through the system that is used within that organization, where the messages will contain
inappropriate phrases or words. The software that will be used to track the e-mail ids of the
employees will be programmed and designed in such a way that will include special
characters or words which will help in tracking those e-mail ids, where secrets related to
trading of services or products that are offered by the information technology organizations,
transmissions related to personal purposes and requests for job hunts or searching and
applying for new jobs from the official e-mail ids (Moussa 2015).
But there will be some issues that the management of these organizations who will
use the software and track the e-mail ids of the employees have to face in their respective
business entities. Many employees will oppose this decision, which may result to leave their
particular job in order to avoid this overall tracking system. But, from the point of view from
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the management of these organizations, there will be valid reasons to implement this system
in the working culture of these organizations, so that the performance of the employees as
well as of the organizations can be improved. It can be said in this context that competition
between the business houses are increasing day by day irrespective of the business sectors
from where the organizations belong. So, tracking system will help these business houses to
follow and implement this tracking system. This will also be helpful for the management of
these organizations to hold liable for taking actions against those employees who will be
involved in viewing or sending defamatory, pornographic, sexually suggestive, and racially
insensitive or criminally threatening materials. But one last thin can be said in this context
that proper notice need to be circulated among the employees before starting this tracking
system, where communication through the e-mail ids along with other usage of their
computer system will be monitored by the management. An ethical balance will be
maintained and a healthy balance can be followed between the employer and the employee
(Ganta 2014).
Monitor the Websites
It has been already stated that there is necessity of monitoring the websites which are
visited by the employees. Categories of websites that are visited by the employees need to
have access to the higher authority so that necessary actions can be taken against those
employees if illegal websites are visited by them. The system of collection of data like total
working hours of number of hours spent by a particular employee on visiting other websites
apart from the their working websites are performed by many business houses around the
world. These help them to review the performances of those employees and assess them
according to their performances. The human resource system gets to know about the detailed
report and decides with the higher authority of a particular company about the performance
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appraisal of those employees. All these occurrences made the task of the human resource
department of an organization easy to analyse the performances of their employees and
decides with the management whether to five promotion to a particular employee or whether
to terminate that employee (Mann and Harter 2016).
So, it can be said that the management of organizations from information technology
background need to monitor the e-mail of their employees by taking the help of software that
will possess the power to inspect every message that will be sent through the system that is
used within that organization, where the messages will contain inappropriate phrases or
words. The software that will be used to track the e-mail ids of the employees will be
programmed and designed in such a way that will include special characters or words which
will help in tracking those e-mail ids, where secrets related to trading of services or products
that are offered by the information technology organizations, transmissions related to
personal purposes and requests for job hunts or searching and applying for new jobs from the
official e-mail ids.
Apart from these, the bandwidth of the websites that are visited by the employees
along with the types of websites visited need to be monitored. In order to do this, a suitable
and efficient tool need to be used which will help the management to record the address of
the visited websites and the amount of time spent by the employees on each of those
websites. Alerts will be sent to the systems used by the management when any illegal or
banned websites will be visited by the employees. List of the sites that are off-limits to the
employees will be circulated to the employees at initial stages after which necessary actions
will be taken if those sites are opened by them even after strict restrictions. It has been found
in various researches that most of the internets are used when an individual is in his or her
office premises. So, it can be assumed that various websites are visited by them when they
are in their working time. It can also be stated in this context that surfing of various websites
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are part of the daily routine for most of the employees, irrespective of their organizational
background and the business sector from where the organization belongs. The production will
be negatively affected, which will, in turn, adversely affect the performance of that particular
company from information technology sector (Elnaga and Imran 2013).
Monitoring the Employee Performances
It has been already discussed that advancement in the area of technology has
increased the competition between the business houses irrespective of the business sectors.
Every business entity is fighting against each other in order to gain the competitive advantage
against the rival companies, and to achieve this, the performances of the employees need to
be monitored so that they can be improved and the competitive advantage advantage can be
gained in this global competitive business market place. It can be said in this context that
performance of the employees and the organizations where they are working are directly
proportional to each other. If the performances of the employees improve, the overall
performance or productivity of that organization will improve and if the performances of the
employees are hampered, then the overall productivity of that organization will hamper, and
the management will fail to lose the competitive advantage (Dasgupta 2013).
So, it is necessary to monitor the performances of the employees, so that necessary
actions can be taken to improve their individual performance levels, which will automatically
improve the productivity of that particular organization. Proper training can also be provided
to the employees if it is found that performance of those employees is decreasing on regular
basis. It can be said in this context that usage of computer technology will help to document,
analyse, measure and monitor all the possible aspects related to the performances of the
employees. Identification of specific areas where the employee is lacking can be done
efficiently by the management, along with checking the overall amount spent by that
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employee on official website or necessary websites that are required to be surfed for official
purposes. Every keystroke per hour or some other unit of time used by an employee can be
tracked by using of particular software system along with each of the response that has been
returned to the user. The overall activities of the employees spent on the websites can be
tracked, but it needs to be measured up to a certain limit. The employees need to be sent
messages that their computers will be tracked in order to assess their performances, so that it
follows the legal aspects of performing of business operations. It should be noted that legal
actions can be taken by the management of a business house if the management finds that off-
limit websites are viewed by any employee, along with termination of that employee. On the
other hand, the employee may also take necessary actions against his or her employer if their
computers are tracked by the management without any prior circulation (Mone and London
2018).
The data that will be collected by the management of an information technology
based company after tracking the websites visited or calculation of the total amount of time
spent on doing official work on their systems can be used to analyse the performance of that
particular employee. It will help to judge the overall productivity of that employee during a
particular span of time, which will also help to calculate the overall company time wasted by
that employee. All these will help to analyse the overall performances of those employees
ethically and a healthy work culture can be followed by performing all appraisal related tasks
ethically and effectively. Positive observations need to be compensated whereas the negative
observations need to be taken into account by the management while calculating and
analysing the data collected from the systems used by the employees from a particular
business like Adobe. Proper and ethical judgement regarding evaluation of the performance
appraisal of those employees need to be followed by the management of organizations like
Adobe, so that the overall performance or productivity of this business house can be followed
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and competitive advantage can be gained and sustained in this global information technology
business market (Agustiningsih et al 2016).
Necessary Steps need to be followed
It can be stated in this context that companies like Adobe need to protect their systems
from tracing of the e-mails by taking the help of electronic shredder software. It has been
seen on various occasions that traces of e-mail helps to provide a clear vision to the tracer
regarding the procedure of operating the system to track the computes used by the employees
of the business entities. These safeguarding will help to cover the secrets that are kept with
the authorized people of the organization. Safety and security of official as well as personal
data need to be kept secret, so that the data and information can be kept confidential and no
competitive advantage can be gained by the rival business houses in information technology
sector. It can be stated in this context that the advancement in the field or technology has both
pros and cons. One of the biggest disadvantages of this advancement is helping the trackers to
steal the data and information related to business that is operated by the management of those
companies.
Circumstances
It has been already discussed that safety and security regarding tracking of the
systems used by the employees in their respective business entities. So, in this context it can
be said that personal information like name, address, contact details like phone number and e-
mail should not be given to any third party organization until and unless any specific request
has been made. It will violate the rules and regulations if any personal information is shared
with any third party agency without the authorization from the buyer’s end. Necessary legal
actions can be taken by the employee if such steps are performed by a company. However, it
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can be said that the information can be used for general purposes, for example, to fulfil the
request while trading with a particular product or service, or making any changes in the
design of a particular product and content in the website of a particular client organization,
and providing anonymous reports to internal as well as external clients. Legal actions can be
taken by the employees whose personal information will be shared with third party agencies,
and following unethical practices. But, it can be noted in this context that legal actions will
only hamper the image of that employee in his or her organization as well as to the company
where that employee works. Competitiveness will be lost in and the management will lost the
opportunities to move forward the business operations of that organization in this global
competitive business world (Yerby 2013) .
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be stated that the management should track the
systems used by the employees in companies like Adobe, so that the performance level can
be monitored properly and necessary actions can be taken to improve their performances
along with the overall performance of the organization. On the other hand, strict actions can
be taken against those employees if that employee visits the off-limit websites that are viewed
by the employees during office hours. All the steps need to be followed efficiently and
ethically, so a healthy relationship can be maintained between the employer and the employee
and proper organizational culture can be maintained so that a flow in the business operations
can be followed and a sustainable competitive advantage can be followed and maintained in
this global competitive information technology market place.
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Reference
Adobe: Creative, marketing and document management solutions. (2020). Adobe: Creative,
marketing and document management solutions. [online] Available at:
https://www.adobe.com/ [Accessed 31 Jan. 2020].
Aguboshim, F.C. and Ezeasomba, J.E.E.I.N., 2019. Monitoring IT and Internet Usage of
Employees for Sustainable Economic Development in Nigeria: Legal and Ethical
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remuneration, job satisfaction and OCB on the employee performance. Science Journal of
Business and Management, 4(6), pp.212-222.
Dasgupta, P.R., 2013. Volatility of workload on employee performance and significance of
motivation: IT sector. Science Journal of Business and Management, 1(1), pp.1-7.
Elnaga, A. and Imran, A., 2013. The effect of training on employee performance. European
journal of Business and Management, 5(4), pp.137-147.
Ganta, V.C., 2014. Motivation in the workplace to improve the employee
performance. International Journal of Engineering Technology, Management and Applied
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Mann, A. and Harter, J., 2016. The worldwide employee engagement crisis. Gallup Business
Journal, 7, pp.1-5.
Mone, E.M. and London, M., 2018. Employee engagement through effective performance
management: A practical guide for managers. Routledge.
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Moussa, M., 2015. Monitoring employee behavior through the use of technology and issues
of employee privacy in America. Sage Open, 5(2), p.2158244015580168.
Yerby, J., 2013. Legal and ethical issues of employee monitoring. Online Journal of Applied
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