Isabelle Wildhaber

Data-driven technologies have come to pervade almost every aspect of business life, extending to employee monitoring and algorithmic management. How can employee privacy be protected in the age of datafication? This article surveys the potential and shortcomings of a number of legal and technical solutions to show the advantages of human rights-based approaches in addressing corporate responsibility to respect privacy and strengthen human agency. Based on this notion, we develop a process-oriented model of Privacy Due Diligence to complement existing frameworks for safeguarding employee privacy in an era of Big Data surveillance.

The use of robotic applications is a growing trend in Switzerland’s healthcare sector. For example, robots have been broadly in use in minimally invasive surgery. Robotic applications in minimally invasive surgery are an information-driven and safety-critical technology governed, amongst others, by data protection as well as medical device regulations. Doctors must make sure they understand how such robots process patient-specific information to comply with the relevant provisions of data protection regulations, which include, in the opinion of the authors, the requirement to seek informed patient consent. Robotic applications in minimally invasive surgery are (normally) medical devices under Swiss law. In this respect, the revised Therapeutic Product Act leads to a tightening of medical device regulations and an increase of the barriers to market entry for medical device manufacturers.

In 2018, 300 hours of content were uploaded on Youtube every minute. Most of it is generated by regular people who share content for a living, and those who amass enough followers are known as influencers. Traditionally, media laws have controlled aired content. Nowadays, broadcasting decentralisation and social media trends such as influencer marketing challenge the rationale and application of these rules. In practice, content is controlled by private parties, through contracts concluded in the monetisation supply chain, giving contract law a critical angle to tackle the peer economy of which influencers are part. Contractual transactions are ripe with tensions: Influencers must constantly entertain followers, yet they depend on brands to monetise their popularity. As monetisation is inherently transactional, contracts are powerful windows into the mechanisms which exercise content control. This paper contributes to the debate on the regulation of social media influencers by examining the supply chain and proposing legal classifications for the type of contracts concluded therein according to Swiss law, as well as by discussing potential contractual vulnerabilities for the parties involved in these transactions.

Organizations increasingly rely on algorithm-based HR decision-making to monitor their employees. This trend is reinforced by the technology industry claiming that its decision-making tools are efficient and objective, downplaying their potential biases. In our manuscript, we identify an important challenge arising from the efficiency-driven logic of algorithm-based HR decision-making, namely that it shifts the delicate balance between employees’ personal integrity and compliance toward favoring compliance. The reason is that algorithm-based HR decision-making may marginalize human sense-making, promote blind trust in rules, and replace moral imagination. We suggest that critical data literacy, ethical awareness, the use of participatory design methods, and private regulatory regimes within civil society can help overcome these challenges. Our paper contributes to literature on workplace monitoring, critical data studies, personal integrity and literature at the intersection between HR management and corporate responsibility.