Summary
The paper, authored by McParland and Connelly (2019) sought to contrast the rights for privacy and concerns about monitoring of the employee against the rights to fair-use of company equipment and resources as well as the reasonable expectation of adequate performance of staff by the employer. A balanced conclusion and summary that speaks to both points of view was provided.
A: Quality of the Research
The abstract clearly stated the objective to “summarize both management … as well as … employee” points of view and provide a balanced viewpoint (p474), which it clearly did in the conclusion.
I believe that this is an increasingly important research topic, given the rise of “AI” in the workplace and its ability to further the corporate agenda of lowering costs (Huber, n.d.), in this paper associated with HR through performance monitoring.
In a Business Ethics Quarterly article, presented by Adam D. Moore in 2000, the author discusses very much the same issue, in much more detail, of “employee monitoring and computer technology” (Moore, 2000) in a vastly inferior technological landscape. Coupling this with fictional movies like “Enemy of the State” (Scott, 1998), which dramatically elaborates on public surveillance, I don’t feel that this research is original, but it does provide a nice balanced viewpoint of both employee and employer in the conclusion.
For the most part, the background research is clear and relevant and gives good context to the conclusion; however, the paper is explicitly written with an American frame of reference and only implicitly includes the rest of the world, which is somewhat contrarian to its stated intent of being balanced.
I don’t perceive any ethical issues with this paper and, from my review, was well researched and cited; however, some additional inline citations would aid in clarity in some paragraphs.
B: The Research Method
Given the topic of employee surveillance by employers, which is of a very personal nature to one half of the entities in the paper, I do believe that the approach taken, following an almost classic “Positivist Research Process” (Williamson, 2018) even with deviance by the lack of tabular data, was the right approach, because the paper was researched through the review of many (47) articles and papers, questions were posed, and comparisons made to support the presented conclusions and, with the exception of the data-collection for analyses, followed the positivist flow almost perfectly.
Based on the outcome of the paper in providing a balanced viewpoint covering both employee and employer concerns and rights I believe the analyses were done correctly.
C: Quality of Presentation
For the most part, yes, the paper is well presented: the questions asked were clear and to the point; the arguments made for and against the questions were well thought out; however, there are numerous grammatical errors that are glaringly obvious to me making certain paragraphs very difficult to read.
The paper follows a well-structured format: abstract, introduction, content, and conclusion sections that made sense.
D: Additional Notes
The paper is peppered with inconsistent as well as glaringly obvious grammatical errors, leading the reader to have to reread entire paragraphs to understand it properly.
“Computer-mediated workplace” was not explained anywhere but is, arguably, not self-explanatory, yet “protection motivation theory” was defined and referenced.
These issues, along with the previously mentioned grammatical errors leads me to believe that the paper was not critically proofread and employed an inconsistent methodology to unify the input of the two writers.
This paper, in my opinion, could have been successfully condensed without losing any of its meaning, relevance, or impact.
References
- McParland C., Connolly R. (2019). Employee Monitoring in the Digital Era: Managing the Impact of Innovation. 2019 ENTRENOVA Conference Proceedings. Dublin City University.
- Huber, B. (n.d.). AI-Powered Cost Optimization: How Smart Companies Are Slashing Expenses and Boosting Efficiency in 2025. From ISG: https://isg-one.com/articles/ai-powered-cost-optimization--how-smart-companies-are-slashing-expenses-and-boosting-efficiency-in-2025
- Moore, A. D. (2000). EMPLOYEE MONITORING AND COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY: EVALUATIVE SURVEILLANCE V. PRIVACY. Business Ethics Quarterly, pp. 697-709.
- Scott, T. (Director). (1998). Enemy of the State [Motion Picture].
- Williamson, K. (2018). Research Concepts. In K. Williamson, & G. Johanson, Research Methods Information, System, and Contexts (pp. 3-25). Kidlington: Elsevier Ltd