
Contents
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Contemporary Work Surveillance Contemporary Work Surveillance
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Surveillance Unbound: Some Questions Surveillance Unbound: Some Questions
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Rhetoric and Reality Rhetoric and Reality
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Machines Versus Managers Machines Versus Managers
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Surprise: You’re on Candid Camera Surprise: You’re on Candid Camera
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Equity Issues Equity Issues
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Drowning in Data: Old and New Standards Drowning in Data: Old and New Standards
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If Some is Good, is more Necessarily Better? If Some is Good, is more Necessarily Better?
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7 Work: The Omniscient Organization Measures Everything That Moves
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Published:May 2016
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Abstract
This fictional satire reports on the highly successful and paternalistic “Omniscient Organization” --a high tech firm that uses the most up to date surveillance tools to fully monitor workers and their transparent environments. The firm relies on the engineering of social control and indefinite discipline. It shows the case of maximum surveillance at all stages of employment and for the on and off duty behavior of workers, as the supervisory gaze is omnipresence and seemingly omnipotent. In the fiction employees agree to this contractual organizational surveillance. They don’t have to work there and many like the high pay and well-ordered secure environment. The case reports management’s reasons for this extreme surveillance environment as this involves the need to be competitive to stay profitable, to minimize liability and to fairly reward those who are the most productive. The surveillance here is impersonal, organizational, formal, focused and contractual in quasi-public work settings. The second part of the chapter offers a critique of this view while also noting the legitimate conflicts of interest that are present and it compares machines vs. managers as supervisors. It notes how workers may neutralize surveillance and the limits on total surveillance in the work context.
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