Abstract

Computer-based monitoring, the practice of collecting performance information on employees through

the computers they use at work, continues to be a popular topic. How much is known about computer-
based monitoring as it is practiced in the workplace? Unfortunately, very little, even though much has
been written on the subject. This article reports on five case studies of organizations that employ
computer-based monitoring to collect performance data on clerical workers. Although all five
organizations utilize similar data collection methods and procedures, no two organizations use the data
collected in the same ways to evaluate employee performance. Each site reports different levels of
employee satisfaction with monitoring, different abilities of employees to balance demands for work
quantity and quality, different levels of work-related illnesses, and different perceptions of supervision.
Although these results do not appear surprising on the surface, much of the popular literature on
computer-based monitoring stresses the negative effects of monitoring on workers, no matter how or
where it is implemented. In this study, the simple presence of computer-based monitoring was not
enough to explain differences between sites. Rather, other factors, such as which data were used for
evaluation and outside economic pressures, helped to explain variations in monitoring and its effects
across sites. Computer-based monitoring, like other information technologies, is a malleable