Measuring Everything That Moves

Measuring Everything That Moves: "This sensitizing and exploratory article considers recent changes in work monitoring. More intensive and extensive monitoring of both work and the worker are part of broader social changes in the nature of surveillance. The monitoring practices and rationales of an ideal-typical company are described. The implications of current surveillance trends for social control and deviance at work are discussed. Among issues covered are increased deviance (or at least greater official labeling of it); drowning in the data; difficulty in finding workers who measure up to the standards; a potential conflict between transparency and innovation and risk-taking; machines vs. managers as interpreters of work monitoring data; worker resistance and implications for equity. The often unintended and ironic outcomes of inappropriate monitoring must be understood if we are to have a society which is both productive and just, and in which the story of Dr. Frankenstein remains just a story."