Deconstruction of Power: An Ethical Response to Organizational Surveillance

Abstract

State of the art pertaining to the technological surveillance in the workplace today witnesses alarmingly amplified ethical apprehensions in the forefront. The two major ethical approaches to surveillance, ‘coercive control’ and ‘caring,’ also demonstrate power relations and are vehemently criticized in respect to individual privacy, autonomy and dignity. The dilemma, however, is that majority of scholars unilaterally focus on individual rights, and consequently, the social impact and the social consequences of surveillance are being overlooked. While acknowledging the different possibilities of addressing the issue, this paper analyses the fundamental social challenges and implications of surveillance in the workplace in dialogue with David Lyon’s concept of surveillance as “social sorting”. This concept enables us to think beyond Michel Foucault’s disciplinary society, according to which persons are “normalized” by their categorical locations, as well as further than Gilles Deleuze’s argument of “society of control”. Hence a proposal of a more adequate work-ethics on the basis of a framework of “care-justice” or a synthesis of ‘culture of care’ and ‘social justice’ over against the ‘culture of power’. We will argue and identify, in opposition to power relations, how the combination of care and justice can serve as a useful hermeneutical key to reconcile the dichotomy between the conflicting rights and interests arising from the use of surveillance in the workplace.

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