Kirstie Ball

The use of human resource information systems: a survey

Presents the results of a survey of the use of human resource information systems (HRIS) in smaller organizations, conducted in 1998. The survey enquires as to the nature of information stored electronically in three core areas: personnel, training and recruitment as well as the type of information analysis being undertaken. Significant relationships were found between the total number of people employed by the organization, and certain aspects of its information storage and manipulation. Smaller organizations were also found to be less likely to use HRIS, and HRIS was also used less frequently in training and recruitment. No sectoral differences were found. Similar to the results of IES/IPD surveys, and some academic work, it was found that HRIS are still being used to administrative ends rather than analytical ones.

Power, Control and Computer-Based Performance Monitoring: Repertoires, Resistance and Subjectivities:

This paper examines Computer-based Performance Monitoring (CBPM) in two UK financial services organizations. In doing so, it examines and critiques the existing manner in which this area has been theorized by both traditional and critical organization theorists. It then offers an alternative analysis of CBPM in terms of power, control and resistance, which involves the close interrogation of subject positioning within the speech of those who are subject to and manage this technology. By examining subject positions in interpretive repertoires, the paper demonstrates how power, control and resistance are constituted at an individual level and are specifically linked to the use (and abuse) of CBPM technology. It then further considers the nature and origins of the interpretive repertoires in relation to their organizational contexts, describing the differential circulation of disciplinary power in each. CBPM is thus understood as a politically neutral technology of power, which, when mobilized by management and discursively interwoven into practice becomes a potent force within local organizational sites. The central message of this paper is that it is possible to reveal the intertwining of individual and institutional discourses purely by examining technologies, practices and subjectivities in local organizational sites.

Organization, Surveillance and the Body: Towards a Politics of Resistance

This paper examines the problematic of embodied resistance to biometric surveillance practices. After establishing that surveillance is becoming more widespread, the paper draws on the multidisciplinary areas of organization theory, surveillance theory, and body and feminist sociology. It is argued that current theoretical resources available to organization theorists are inadequate for analysing resistance to these technologies. After an investigation of recent developments in the sociology of the body and in surveillance theory, resistance is conceptualized at the interface of bodies and technologies, and is antagonistic towards categorizations and fixities produced by biometrics. A number of resistance strategies are distilled, using feminist and post-structuralist sociology. Although it is acknowledged that the paper’s arguments do not address questions of agency and an ethics of the self, resistance arguments that challenge the totalizing impulse of surveillance practice are welcome in the face of government and private sector rhetoric about its desirability.

Workplace surveillance: an overview

This article attempts to review the proliferation of research findings about surveillance in the workplace and the issues surrounding it. It establishes a number of points of departure when considering the issue of workplace surveillance, before reviewing some of the more critical issues. First, it establishes that organizations and surveillance go hand in hand; and that workplace surveillance can take social and technological forms. Personal data gathering, Internet and email monitoring, location tracking, biometrics and covert surveillance are all areas of development. There is also evidence that groups of employees are appropriating information and communication technologies to stare back at their employers, exposing unsavoury practices and organizing collectively, prompting new thinking about resistance. Organizations watch employees primarily to protect their assets, although the nature and intensity of surveillance says much about how a company views its employees. Workplace surveillance has consequences for employees, affecting employee well-being, work culture, productivity, creativity and motivation. If no alternative can be found, managerial attention to task design, supervisory processes, employees’ expectations about monitoring, and an appraisal of the companys operating environment can mediate its downsides. It is argued that in many ways the normality of workplace surveillance, and the prevalence of arguments about how to ‘do it better’, make it difficult to radicalize. As part of what is seen as ‘good’ management practice, it can confer benefits on the employee if conducted in a humane, balanced way, and is considered on a case-by-case–organization-by-organization–basis. However, the introduction of broader debates around information use, rights, power and social structure highlights how surveillance in the workplace may serve to perpetuate existing inequalities and create new ones.

The development of trust and distrust in a merger

This paper explores the development and maintenance of trust and distrust in an organization undergoing a merger. Using a longitudinal study we examined the sense‐making of retained staff by comparing two sets of in‐depth interviews with six survivors and detailed field notes. Four central themes were identified revealing differences between trust and distrust. The themes included: the importance of perceived changes to the psychological contract, organizational justice, reputations of individuals and risk management. By analysing the sense‐making the need for congruence between what was done and how it was done was revealed. As distrust grew staff balanced this disequilibrium through their trust in the familiar, however, this finding calls into question the role of rationality as the basis for risk management. We discuss the implications of these findings for the successful management of mergers.

Supporting Innovation through HR Policy: Evidence from the UK

This paper focuses on the relationship between the importance of innovation for organizations and their human resources policy. Drawing on survey findings, we examine the coherence of organizations’ utilization of HR recruitment, training and performance management policies to support and enhance firms’ innovation performance. Through a social–psychological perspective, we situate our findings in two diverse areas: the psychological literature, exploring the measurement of innovation, and second, with regard to the internal (with each other) and external (with broader organizational objectives) integration of distinct HR policy elements. Our surveyed organizations indicate that, whilst attaching importance to innovation, they fail to consistently translate this importance into coherent HR policies. Typically, HR policy rewarded non-managerial employees for innovation, whilst managerial staff were expected to do so as a matter of course. This inconsistency is one source of resistance which blocks the generation of new ideas, and their implementation, organization-wide.

EXPOSURE: Exploring the subject of surveillance

The aim of this paper is to identify a construct which may be used to frame the subjective experience of surveillance in contemporary society. The papers central question concerns whether there is a concept to describe the experience of surveillance which can then inform empirical studies. Surveillance practice has consequences for the individual, yet surveillance studies do not have a particular take on the subject. Building on some preliminary empirical observations from the workplace, the paper suggests that the notion of ‘exposure’ is a useful starting point. The paper explores the range of ways in which subjects can be exposed under surveillance, and theoretically locates the concept in relation to developments in organization theory, new media theory and surveillance theory. Two observations are made which support the centrality of the ‘exposure’ concept within studies of surveillance. The first argument is that the body interior of the surveilled subject is more open to division, classification an...The aim of this paper is to identify a construct which may be used to frame the subjective experience of surveillance in contemporary society. The papers central question concerns whether there is a concept to describe the experience of surveillance which can then inform empirical studies. Surveillance practice has consequences for the individual, yet surveillance studies do not have a particular take on the subject. Building on some preliminary empirical observations from the workplace, the paper suggests that the notion of ‘exposure’ is a useful starting point. The paper explores the range of ways in which subjects can be exposed under surveillance, and theoretically locates the concept in relation to developments in organization theory, new media theory and surveillance theory. Two observations are made which support the centrality of the ‘exposure’ concept within studies of surveillance. The first argument is that the body interior of the surveilled subject is more open to division, classification and scrutiny, because it is seen as a source of truth, the target of public revelation or fetish. There is now a political economy around the revelation of this interiority, which calls for a non-reductive and multi-dimensional approach to the subjective experience of surveillance. The second argument is that the nature and character of exposure are products of institutional configurations, which have consequences at the level of the individual. A research agenda is developed which will frame future work exploring the experience of surveillance.

Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance in Call Centres: A Framework for Investigation

The worker performing a monitored task and the social processes surrounding the task provide a basis for integrating psychological and sociological research on work performance monitoring and surveillance in call centres. Foci include individual boundaries, compliance and resistance, controlling the effects of monitoring, negotiated order, metacommunication, and social support.

Elements of surveillance: A new framework and future directions

Abstract This article argues for a wider conceptualization of the meaning and significance of surveillance in contemporary social studies. It has been written in the context of recently published work by Lyon (2001, 2002) who establishes a powerful argument illuminating the social and technical interconnectedness of surveillance systems, and the invisibility of their social ordering effects, in everyday life. The article is divided into two parts. The first examines recent empirical work concerning two domains of surveillance practice, which are significant, and typical of the research findings in these areas of study. The first surveillance practice is that of CCTV in public space, and the second is that which occurs in the workplace. The second part, mindful of Lyons (2001, 2002) arguments, analyses the recently published work to examine broader ways in which we might want to conceptualize surveillance. It argues that it comprises four elements: representation, meaning, manipulation and intermediation which interact to form ‘surveillance domains’, and, at a local level, are contested, politicized places. Highlighting the role of intermediation, it uses this framework as the basis of an applied research strategy into everyday surveillance practices.

Situating workplace surveillance: Ethicsand computer based performance monitoring

This paper examines the study of computer basedperformance monitoring (CBPM) in the workplaceas an issue dominated by questions of ethics.Its central contention paper is that anyinvestigation of ethical monitoring practice isinadequate if it simply applies best practiceguidelines to any one context to indicate,whether practice is, on balance, ‘ethical’ or not. The broader social dynamics of access toprocedural and distributive justice examinedthrough a fine grained approach to the study ofworkplace social relations, and workplaceidentity construction, are also important here. This has three implications, which are examinedin the paper, and are as follows: First, thatit is vital for any empirical investigation ofthe ethics of CBPM practice to take intoaccount not only its compliance withpreexisting ‘best practice’ guidelines, butalso the social relations which pervade thecontext of its application. Second, that thisnecessitates a particular epistemologicaltreatment of CBPM as something whose effectsare measurable and identifiable, as well assomething which has a socially constructedmeaning and is tropic in nature. Third, thatexisting debates against which this argument isset, which regard contrasting epistemologiesand ontologies as incompatible, should beaddressed, and an alternative introduced. Introducing situated knowledges (Haraway 1991)and material semiotic ontologies as such analternative, the paper proceeds to analyse theethics of a particular case of monitoringpractice, Norco. Drawing on Marx (1998) thepaper concludes that a fine grain analysis ofthe social is vital if we are to understandfully the ethics of monitoring in theworkplace.