Student ID: 32309147

Module Code: MANG2057

Assignment Title: Individual Coursework
Word Count:

“Choose a philosophical school of thought and analyse how it can help us understand an organizational
phenomenon”

 - Instead of a major school of thought you can choose a specific philosopher. Still, you should place his or her
philosophical outlook in the tradition of thought that s/he belongs.

- It is essential that you communicate sound understanding of the ideas of the chosen school of thought.

- You must also make sure that you apply abstract philosophical ideas in a concrete organizational
phenomenon, and that you do not limit the essay in reiterating philosophical discourse.

- Instead of focusing on narrow organizational phenomena you are also allowed to analyse phenomena falling
within the broader context of organized societies.

- Ideally, you will develop novel connections and insights. But it is equally important if you manage to relate
(critically or developmentally) with any existing relevant organizational literature.

School of thought/philosopher
Organizational phenomenon (a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose
cause or explanation is in question.)
Relevant organizational literature
Place Foucault’s outlook in the tradition of thought he belong to
Explain Foucault and the school of thought
Aply the philosophy to phenomenon

250 Introduction: interdisciplinarity offers perspective, view an organizational phenomenon through philosophy,
workplace surveillance through Foucault
679 Faoucault as a philosopher
663 Discipline and punish on surveillance – docile bodies, modern techniques of control, panopticon
300 Brief Evolution of workplace surveillance
300 Digital with news examples
300Reasons
300consequences
250 Conclusion

Foucault on Workplace Surveillance

Introduction

Michel Foucault

Before we launch into the thoughts on surveillance and their managerial applicability, the
paper will first acquaint its reader with the figure of Michel Foucault, his intellectual
background and the way in which it had formed his work. Michel Foucault was born in
Poitiers, France in 1926 and died in Paris, 1984, of AIDS. Biographies often classify him as a
‘French historian and philosopher, associated with the structuralist and post-structuralist
movements’ (Gutting, Oksala, 2021). That being said, Foucault himself often rejected the
structuralist categorization, moreover, a debate might be held on the account of whether
Foucault is in fact a philosopher. Alongside philosophy he was educated in history and
psychology, his books were mostly histories of social and medical sciences, and his passions
lied in politics and literature. From the 1970s he had actively engaged in politics, he founded
the Groupe d’information sur les prisons and often protested on behalf of marginalized
groups. His primary preoccupation though, since the 1960s, were multiple positions at French
universities culminating with his election in 1969 to the highly respected Collège de France,
where he stayed as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought until his death. The work
produced in this last period of his life in combination with series of his lectures published
post-mortem are to this day regarded as greatly influential not only in philosophy, but
perhaps even more so in humanistic and social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology,
literary theory, gender studies or criminology. (Gutting, Oksala, 2021)

What is easier to define than Foucault’s categorization are the intellectual influences that
formed his literary work. While still a student at the École Normale Supérieure, he was
guided by his teachers towards Heideggerian existentialism and Marxism, which are both
perceptible in his earlier work. As an indirect influence, it is worth mentioning Jean-Paul
Sartre, with whom Foucault shared a hatred for the bourgeoisie and a liking for literature,
philosophy and marginal groups like homosexuals, prisoners or madmen. Among positive
influences, the French tradition of history and philosophy of science should be listed,
particularly Georges Canguilhem’s approach to the history of science. Canguilhem inspired
in Foucault a novel view on the discontinuities in scientific history and the understanding of
historical concepts not through phenomenological transcendental consciousness but through
structuralism, a school of thought that shaped Foucault’s histories on the origins of modern
medicine and on the origins of the modern human sciences - Birth of the Clinic and The
Order of Things, respectively. (Gutting, Oksala, 2021)

To put Foucault’s teaching in context, it is advisable to now briefly revise his dominant
predecessors. Socrates enriched philosophy in the questioning of the accepted knowledge of
the day. Locke, Hume, and predominantly, Kant, introduced philosophy as the critique of
knowledge. Kant argued that seemingly contingent features of human cognition (i.e., the
spatial and temporal character of its perceptual objects) turn out to be necessary truths.
Foucault inverted Kant’s focus, suggesting that the apparently necessary, might be
contingent, not the other way around. Applied on modern human sciences – biological,
psychological, social, Foucault believed them to be ‘mere expressions of ethical and political
commitments of a particular society’, not ‘universal scientific truths about human nature’.
Following on his critical philosophy, each of Foucault’s major publications is a critique of
historical reason. (Gutting, Oksala, 2021)

Commenting on Foucault’s methodologies, he distinguished two major methods, out of

which one extends the other. The archaeological method presupposes that systems of thought
and knowledge (discursive formations) are guided by rules that originate from beneath the
consciousness of individuals and determine the boundaries of thought in a specific domain
and period. In short, discursive formations should be understood in place and time.
Archaeology might suffice in clarifying the contrast in the thought and knowledge systems
across ages, yet it can not elaborate on the causes of such transition. That is when
archaeological findings are confronted with genealogy, first introduced in Discipline and
Punish, the method which aims to explain how a particular discursive formation has resulted
from contingent turns of history, not logically inevitable trends. (Gutting, Oksala, 2021)

Discipline and Punish

The focal apparatus of this essay are the philosophical concepts established in Discipline and
Punish, the genealogical study of modern criminal imprisonment as a successor to killing and
tortures. Foucault particularly highlights how the enlightened reform in turn triggers the
development of more effective control, to quote: ‘to punish less, perhaps; but certainly, to
punish better’ (Gutting, Oksala, 2021). The most striking proposition of the study is that the
new mode of punishment has metastasized throughout modern society to become the model
of control in modern institutions, which assert their disciplinary power on populations. The
disciplinary techniques produce ‘docile bodies’, machine-like bodies, the functioning of
which could be regulated, calculated and modified as a means to reach maximum effectivity.
Docile bodies are created by three modern techniques of control: hierarchical observation,
normalizing judgment, and the examination. (Gutting, Oksala, 2021) (Gutting, 2013)

Hierarchical observation is built on the fact that control over people can be achieved merely
by observing them (Gutting, 2013). A perfect observational system would allow a single
guard to observe everything, which is often not possible, and therefore dealt with by two
common means: observation is hierarchically ordered or architectonically simplified (as is the
case of tiered rows of seats in lecture halls, where the teacher could monitor all at once).

Normalizing judgement, the second technique of control, embodies the primary function of
modern disciplinary systems – the objective to correct deviant behaviour. The problem is,
that the judgements are given based on a comparison scale, not intrinsic wrongness or
rightness. It is not enough for a child to learn how to read, it must read in the 50 th percentile
of its reading group. What is more, normalizing judgement becomes unescapable, because for
every achievement there exists a scale by which an even greater achievement is conceivable.
Lastly, unconformity to norms may lead to being branded as ‘abnormal’, therefore socially
unacceptable. (Gutting, 2013)

The combination of hierarchical observation with normalizing judgment sets the basis for
examination, an example of Foucauldian power/knowledge. Foucault believed that, at least
for the study of human beings, the goals of power and knowledge cannot be isolated: ‘in
knowing we control and in controlling we know’. Thus, a hospital patient elicits the truth to
the examiner/doctor, who then directs the patient to a course of treatment. The examined
turns into a case situated in a field of documentation, subdued to the process of having his
detailed information recorded and abused by power systems. In that regard caring becomes an
opportunity for control. (Gutting, 2013) (Gutting, Oksala, 2021)

The most transferable concept in Discipline and Punish is the metaphor of the Panopticon.
Literally meaning ‘all-seeing’, the Panopticon is an architectonic model adopted by Foucault
from Bentham, designed for the purpose of the execution of disciplinary power. In principle,
the Panopticon is an arch-shaped prison, in which each inmate is at all times isolated and
invisible to the others, while also being observable by a guard obscured in a central tower
(Manokha, 2018). Despite the fact, that it is impossible for the guard to monitor all inmates
simultaneously, they cannot estimate, when they are or are not under surveillance. With that
in mind, the inmates are compelled to police themselves, the result being that the control is
achieved by the possibility of monitoring more than by actual supervision (Manokha, 2019).
What makes the Panopticon particularly interesting is that its principle may by applied not
only to prisons but to any other system of disciplinary power, from hospitals, schools,
factories, to the whole of society. ‘The power of the gaze’ and the knowledge/power over
docile bodies create a system in which individuals exercise self-restraint and self-discipline in
order to conform to the norm and the expectations of a watcher (Gutting, Oksala, 2021).
From this perspective, the panoptical metaphor becomes ever more relevant in modern
institutions, among others at the workplace, where surveillance is deemed an integral
practice, as will be investigated in the following sections of the essay.

Workplace Surveillance

Surveillance, in the context of work, may be understood as the ability of the management to
monitor, record and track employee behaviours and personal characteristics in real time or as
part of wider organizational processes (Ball, 2010). Pervasive employer surveillance of
workers has a rich history of defining workplace power dynamics. The reason might be that
since human labour power has begun to be traded as a commodity, employers
correspondingly required a means of control to maximize their surplus. In light of this, one
could say that workplace surveillance and the invasion of employee privacy have always
been an inherent component of capitalism (Ajunwa, Crawford, Schultz, 2017?). According to
Foucault, disciplinary power of panoptic institutions was a fundamental pillar on which
capitalism could have been built, for it provided the bourgeoisie with an inexpensive strategy
to counteract the social consequences (in the form of robbers, vagabonds or undisciplined
workers) and to foster suitable habits in workers (respect for authority, efficiency or time
management). In Discipline and Punish, he comments on the apparent lack of surprise in the
notion that ‘prisons resemble factories, which, in turn, resemble prisons’ (Manokha, 2019).
Indeed, practices to control and exploit workers can be tracked back to the slavery, warfare
and globalization of the colonial period (Ajunwa, Crawford, Schultz, 2017?). In the 18th
century, the entry of clock into the workplace marked a landmark in the commodification
process with the transformation of abstract time into payable hours, which only deepened the
necessity for more efficient employees and arguably more intensive control. These tendencies
peaked in the last century with the introduction of Taylor’s scientific management or
Fordism. Henry Ford, in particular, pushed the limits of monitoring even further, hiring
private investigators to regularly check on his employees’ lives with the goal of anticipating
personal problems which could have interfered with work (Manokha, 2019). Today, the
admirable attempts of Ford are far outperformed, as surveillance now belongs to the
technological realm where private detectives are substituted by the increased abuse of
personal data, biometrics, or covert surveillance.

Workplace Surveillance in the 21st Century asi?

Modern companies have a tendency towards following the historical trend of outsourcing
worker surveillance systems. These are represented by the user-activity monitoring (UAM)
industry, a market estimated at $1.1 billion in 2019, with the prospect of tripling its value by
2023 (Manokha, 2019). The adoption of UAM is gaining popularity, especially in the US,
where on the report of the American Management Associacion 66 percent of companies
monitor their employees’ Internet use, 45 percent log keystrokes, and 43 percent track
employee e-mails (Manokha, 2019). To shortly expose the services and products at hand, one
may use InterGuard, developed by Sonar, as an example. The InterGuard portfolio comprises
of sets of analyses of communication (email, social media, Internet), file and printing activity
or geolocation, analysed over a period of time resulting in defining the employees’
behavioural patterns. In regard to the competition, a few honourable mentions are ActivTrak,
Time Doctor, Toggl, Activity Monitor, WorkTime Corporate, and Berqun (Manokha, 2019).
To provide corporate examples, Amazon warehouse loaders operate with devices that deduct
the shortest routes and motivate workers to stay on schedule. Similar tracking technologies
are used by delivery firms like the United Parcel Service (UPS). In 2015, Sociometric
Solutions, delivered employee ID badges to over twenty companies, equipped with a
microphone, location sensor and accelerometer. Bank of America, one of its clients, could
examine behavioural patterns based on each worker’s seating habits in the cafeteria and the
mood of lunch conversation. Devices with the ability to record conversations, but also beeps
of scanners or bag rustling were implemented by Walmart under the title of Listening to the
Frontend. In 2019, The Three Square Market company from Wisconsin has got half of its
employees microchipped at a chip party organized for that objective (Manokha, 2019). What
is worth noting is the novel inclination to engage in permanent employee surveillance, that is,
continue collecting their whereabouts after the working day has ended, whether it be Fitbit
information on sleep quality and physical exercise or the scanning of Internet practices or
movement tracking on company owned phones, laptops and cars and in that sense walking
the line of establishing universal individual visibility (Ajunwa, Crawford, Schultz, 2017?).

337 Brief Evolution of workplace surveillance

362 Digital with news examples
300Reasons
300consequences

(Ajunwa, Crawford, Schultz, 2017?). (Ajunwa, Crawford, Schultz, 2017).

(Manokha, 2018)
Worplace Surveillance overview (Ball, 2010)

The Causes and Consequences of Employee Monitoring

The last section of the essay will attempt to discuss the dominant reasons for and emerging
consequences of workplace surveillance through a Foucauldian point of view. To start with,
the reader might observe the reasons why organizations monitor their employees as listed by
Kirstie Ball in her Workplace Surveillance: An Overview (2010). First, businesses aspire to
maintain the level of productivity and monitor the use of resources by employees. Second,
they need to protect corporate interests and guard the company against defamation, data theft,
or hacking. Third, employee surveillance might provide evidence in legal liabilities. And last,
workers expect to receive feedback on their performance and generally regard such behaviour
as skilled management practice. Understood through Foucault, businesses adhere to control
practices in order to raise disciplined workers, the notion of which instigates the workers’
motivation to work diligently. Having said that, one should consider the negative
consequences which arise when surveillance is performed under harmful conditions, notably
when monitoring crosses the boundary of what is deemed reasonable or necessary or when
surveillance practices negatively affect the level of employee autonomy and trust, or even the
work process itself.

One remarkable controversy is the case of employee awareness, or lack therof, in regards to
the monitoring practices and policy.

Prison function to reform, blbost negativní učinek

Against-
Privacy compromised, function creep (decisions on pay or promotion), reduction of creativity,
monitored tasks are deemed more important than unmonitored ones, intense surveillance increases
resistance, sabotage and non-compliance with management.

CONSEQUENCES – chilling effect, negative electro effect of work and danger,

perennial data storaging
what is important is that when revealed, such actions tend to generate a great deal of publicity, thereby
increasing social awareness of the extent of modern surveillance and, we may add, contributing to the
production of the panoptic effect: individuals become conscious that they are under surveillance, that
data about their online (and also offline) activity are being collected and stored by various entities,
that the digital traces they leave may be gathered and analyzed in ways and for purposes that they do
not know of and at points in time that are not known to them either. In this setting, we would expect
individuals to start exercising self-discipline and self-restraint.

Chilling effect - the action of holding back free speech in the context of surveillance [Dolich 1993]),
is now widely used to describe changes in behaviour made by individuals, aware of being under
surveillance, to be in conformity with the perceived norms or expectations of the surveyors

U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), as revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, which extensively
used Facebook data (including data that is not publicly available on user profiles)

a large number of individuals immediately changed their behaviour both online and offline, concerned
the freedom of expression, serious threat to the model of journalism as practised in Western
democratic countries

What seems to be distinctive about the workplace, however, is that we are starting to see an
increasing aggregation of different forms of data flows. Thus, employers can gather data
concerning employees’ productivity, communications, movements inside and outside the
workplace, as well as their physical conditions—body mass index, cholesterol levels, diet,
exercise, lifestyle, and so on—in order to create individual employee profiles.

Reviews as a form of surveillance of independent contractors

All these developments have important implications for power relations in the workplace.
With the visual gaze of the supervisor being replaced by an automated electronic gaze—
that is, an automated, continuous, and real-time data collection and analysis performed
electronically—the disciplinary power within the panoptic dispositif of the workplace has
considerably increased

Similar insights may be drawn from Benjamin Snyder’s and Karen Levy’s studies of long-
distance truck drivers, which also reveal that, under constant electronic monitoring, drivers
feel pressure to not take mandated breaks and to continue working even when sleep is
necessary.  As a result, returning to Marx’s distinction between extensive and intensive
71

exploitation, the increase in the disciplinary power of modern workplaces contributes to the
growth of both forms of exploitation—employees tend to work longer  and more intensely.

perennial data reject outwitting the monitor

Thus, with the rise of computers, as observed by some scholars already in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g.,
Rule 1973; Marx 1988), the collected information became storable, potentially perennially, as well as
easily searchable and accessible. Computers allowed for the cross-referencing of data stored in
different databases, the profiling and sorting of individuals using diverse criteria, and the creating of
different kinds of scoring systems to evaluate or rate individuals according to various criteria. With
the more recent rise of biometrics and facial recognition technologies, as well as with the growth of
social networks comprising hundreds of millions of users, the extent of the data on individuals
possessed by governmental and, in particular commercial entities, has become gigantic.

(Bauman and Lyon 2013) in which the boundaries between different ‘watchers’ have become blurred.
Thus, data collected by private entities (social networks, online shops, mobile phone networks,
Internet providers, insurance companies, corporate employers, and so on) may easily end up in the
hands of public-sector actors, such as intelligence and security services. Inversely, data collected by
public-sector institutions may be handed over, or even sold, to private-sector actors (e.g., public
hospitals sell data on patients’ medicine intake to pharmaceutical companies; police provide data to
insurance companies, etc.).
List of References

Ajunwa, I., Crawford, K. and Schultz, J., 2017. Limitless Worker Surveillance - California
Law Review. [online] California Law Review. Available at:
<https://www.californialawreview.org/print/3-limitless-worker-surveillance/?
fbclid=IwAR2tSre8zi3MaBfgPFs0ExAAlsGL2QQspft2b79OzHVkMO_FAHIT82NYN
TA> [Accessed 14 May 2022].
Ball, K., 2010. Workplace surveillance: an overview. Labor History, 51(1), pp.87-106.
Gutting, G. and Oksala, J., 2003. Michel Foucault (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
[online] Plato.stanford.edu. Available at: <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/?
fbclid=IwAR0gQVTUkzujNlnMrCSLZmoefVtXM_WF7TWSWzdqLjAxKfcHzIzsORC
1yDg#HistPris> [Accessed 15 May 2022].
Gutting, G., 2005. Foucault: A Very Short Introduction.
Manokha, Ivan. 2018. Surveillance, Panopticism, and Self-Discipline in the Digital Age.
Surveillance & Society 16(2): 219-237.
https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/index
Manokha, I., 2019. New Means of Workplace Surveillance. [online] Monthly Review.
Available at: <https://monthlyreview.org/2019/02/01/new-means-of-workplace-
surveillance/?
fbclid=IwAR1XVpb4Hh4M_7HcH1s7n4g5abWgIqkCpeoEIENEPNjr5MtgRAlOk6iy8y
Q> [Accessed 14 May 2022].