Surveillance

Conceptual Overview

Two approaches to surveillance have coexisted throughout the development of research on this topic: the managerial view and the critical view. The managerial view of surveillance seeks to understand the consequences of different surveillance practices on the efficiency and the effectiveness of organizations. The critical view of surveillance seeks to understand the consequences of surveillance for managers' power over employees and for employees' willingness and ability to resist that power. Although the practice of surveillance may be as old as work itself, the study of surveillance began with the systematization of management in the early years of the 20th century. Frederick Taylor's Principles of Management is still the most popular early discussion of surveillance in organizations. In his Principles, Taylor argued that managers should systematically supervise employees' work to ensure strict adherence to prescribed work processes. Today's organizations have to comply with a number of standards (e.g., ISO 9000) and need to keep their production processes efficient and errorfree. Managers thus need to exert as much surveillance to ensure adherence to prescribed procedures as they did to discipline recalcitrant workers when Taylor laid out his Principles.

Another camp in the managerial approach to surveillance argues that unobtrusive forms of surveillance can be more effective than practices such as direct supervision because of their preemptive nature. Authors in this camp argue that measuring and displaying employees' performance promotes compliance. The point is that employees' sense of self-worth is connected to their performance. If this performance is measured, then it will be more visible and thus be more powerful a motivator. If employees' performance is made visible to each other, then peer pressure will create a collective drive for performance without managers' intervention. More important, the very awareness of the visibility of their performance will keep employees from deviating from prescribed roles, rules, and procedures because of their fear of detection by managers or peers.

Authors in the managerial approach to surveillance debate the appropriate level and focus for this practice; authors in the critical approach to surveillance ponder its consequences for the power relationships among managers and employees. The critical approach contends that the managerial approach glosses over issues of power and domination. Surveillance, together with other oppressive managerial practices, removes a considerable amount of autonomy from employees, allowing managers to enforce strict compliance with rules and directives with little, if any, resistance. Some of those espousing this critical approach to surveillance, such as Michael Burawoy, are dissatisfied with the lack of agency this approach attributes to employees. These authors have shown that employees are able to carve spaces of resistance, even when subjected to high levels of surveillance. Employees in these studies are aware of managers' attempt to use surveillance to exert power [Page 1491]over them. These workers can improvise practices to escape and even thwart managers' power to enforce compliance with prescribed rules and directives.

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