University of Twente Student Theses

Login

Me, My Work, and I: The Quantification of Employees’ Performance and the Disruption of Self in Workplace Surveillance Contexts

Kiencke, Janne L. (2023) Me, My Work, and I: The Quantification of Employees’ Performance and the Disruption of Self in Workplace Surveillance Contexts.

[img] PDF
777kB
Abstract:Many companies introduced advanced workplace surveillance technologies, including monitoring body metrics and productivity. The popularity of these technologies calls for a multidisciplinary debate on their effects on work and employees. Arguably, there are reasons why monitoring in workplaces could be seen as a necessity for practical endeavours, such as billing of clients and organisation of the company and processes. However, workplace surveillance impacts the understanding of work and individuals' identities. This thesis argues for the data tracked and provided by surveillance technologies being influential concerning the employees' identity and social relations in the workplace. The extent to which productivity-tracking technologies disrupt the employees’ identity leads to their loss of autonomy and, through heightened power relations, to them experiencing epistemic injustices. Counteracting workplace surveillance's impact on employees, humanistic management is presented as a way to guide a more human-centred management that supports employees in their autonomy and development. This thesis contributes to the academic discourse by depicting the far-reaching effects of these technologies on workers, their identities, and how they relate to agency, autonomy, and well-being in an interdisciplinary manner.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Programme:Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society MSc (60024)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/97360
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page