Isabel Laura Ebert

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.

Structured large-scale problems such as digitally replicated injustices challenge contemporary regulatory regimes necessitating a critical inquiry into existing systems of governance. While these injustices and risks disproportionately impact those in the Global South, both the problem and remedy are rarely placed in the necessary contextual perspective of Southern hemispheres. From victims’ access to remedy vantage point, delocalization of justice for harms originated in Africa and most Global South nations is often justified on the basis of a search for favorable legal systems. Some of the justificatory claims include the financial and procedural advantage courts in the West offer victims, high prospect for out-of-court settlement and financial compensation, and high publicity. While the transnational quest for justice is understandable, it appears to be a weak answer to a complex question. It starts off from an assumption that the current paradigm of the liability regime provides an answer, and that venues in the West would provide better access to justice. An interrogation of the deeper epistemological paradigm that shapes the horizon of possibilities to access justice is lacking. In todays’ structured large-scale governance gaps, a response to the perceived absence of favorable judicial environment in Africa and the quest for justice by switching fora is at best an incomplete solution. At worst, shifting fora could come with an implied risk of neo-colonial implications. It is against this backdrop that we argue that a critical appraisal of the conventional liability regimes on which legal systems rely to determine responsibility for injustice is necessary. Using the question of justice in the digital space to assess current liability regimes, we interrogate the conventional liability regime based on liberal political theory, identify its shortcomings for dealing with the questions of justice raised by the digital space, and propose an alternative to address the identified shortcomings through an alternate perspective of responsibility inspired by the African ethics of duty. This perspective can contribute to the improvement of access to justice and re-center the African ethics of duty in the conversation around quest for justice.

The goal of this paper is to develop an empirically grounded framework to analyze how new technologies alter or expand traditional organizational control configurations. New technologies for data gathering, analysis, interpretation and learning are increasingly applied in the workplace. Technology suppliers are developing and aggressively marketing solutions for employee management and control with growing interest. Yet detailed insight about the effects of these technologies on traditional control is lacking. To convey a better understanding about new technologies in employee management and control, this paper proposes a “New Technology Control Framework” on the basis of an iterative research design. The framework is anchored in the configurational control theory, drawing on empirical insights of research on electronic performance monitoring and enhanced 26 topic-guided interviews with experts, who either produce new technological control solutions or apply these. The prototype of a morphology of new technology control configurations (NTCCs) is refined through expert workshops and undergoes plausibility checks with users. The final framework is composed of eleven distinct, yet interrelated conceptual building blocks. The framework offers a first point of orientation to systematically analyze key implications for theory and practice for turning NTCC into a productive force for organizational control. It indicates which elements a configurational theory of organizational control should address in the digital age, to assist decision makers to strategically implement, customize off-the-shelf products and manage digitalization at the workplace. The results offer a conducive starting point for a range of scientific discourses in multiple fields by contributing to understanding how technological progress and digital transformation influence organizations.

The goal of this paper is to develop an empirically grounded framework to analyze how new technologies alter or expand traditional organizational control configurations. New technologies for data gathering, analysis, interpretation and learning are increasingly applied in the workplace. Technology suppliers are developing and aggressively marketing solutions for employee management and control with growing interest. Yet detailed insight about the effects of these technologies on traditional control is lacking. To convey a better understanding about new technologies in employee management and control, this paper proposes a “New Technology Control Framework” on the basis of an iterative research design. The framework is anchored in the configurational control theory, drawing on empirical insights of research on electronic performance monitoring and enhanced 26 topic-guided interviews with experts, who either produce new technological control solutions or apply these. The prototype of a morphology of new technology control configurations (NTCCs) is refined through expert workshops and undergoes plausibility checks with users. The final framework is composed of eleven distinct, yet interrelated conceptual building blocks. The framework offers a first point of orientation to systematically analyze key implications for theory and practice for turning NTCC into a productive force for organizational control. It indicates which elements a configurational theory of organizational control should address in the digital age, to assist decision makers to strategically implement, customize off-the-shelf products and manage digitalization at the workplace. The results offer a conducive starting point for a range of scientific discourses in multiple fields by contributing to understanding how technological progress and digital transformation influence organizations.