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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Performance Monitoring
Message-ID: <689@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Sep-86 15:56:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.689
Posted: Sat Sep 27 15:56:09 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Sep-86 00:42:03 EDT
Reply-To: mandel@well.UUCP (Thomas F. Mandel)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 30
Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <681@hplabsc.UUCP>

This article is from well!mandel@hplabs.HP.COM (Thomas F. Mandel)
 and was received on Sat Sep 27 00:51:31 1986
 

This issue of monitoring employee productivity is an old one that has
recently been reborn.  Originally, in manufacturing environments, it was
called Taylorism, and was one of the reasons, albeit a relatively minor
one, that unions emerged in this country.

I don't defend current practices at all, but want to point out that from
employers' perspectives, there has been great confusion about how to
organize and measure performance effectively in white-collar environments.
This problem is actually very significant and has to do with the lack of
a sound "economics of information <work>."  From a technical perspective,
there is some reason to measure and understand work flows, productivity,
and so forth in offices.  However, it is not clear that this is being
done within an appropriate paradigm (the paradigm employed is the factory
paradigm, of course), and as the previous writer pointed out, current
practices are rife with abuse of individual rights (although not necessarily
in a legal sense).

You could also put this sort of "monitoring" into a grab bag of corporate
activities that fall under the label of "Increasing Intrusion of Companies
Into Private Life," a clear trend in American business.  (Mandatory drug
testing is another aspect of the same trend.)  I personally regard the trend
as highly alarming, and rather Orwellian in character.

	Tom Mandel
	...well!mandel
	mandel@sri-kl.arpa