Electronic mail,privacy, and the public sector: Guidelines for public employees and organizations

What privacy rights are public employees entitled to when using their electronic mail systems? Are they entitled to privacy rights in the messages they send or receive? The setting, public or private, is crucial to determine what privacy rights exist for the employee. Unfortunately, no public sector electronic mail privacy case has been considered by the courts. Nevertheless, E-mail privacy guidance does exist. This article investigates previous privacy considerations provided in other workplace situations—cases that involve technologies other than E-mail—in search for common rules established by the Supreme Court. With this foundation, the article then applies the same rules to an electronic mail environment and provides guidelines intended to assist public managers in the creation or reevaluation of their organization’s electronic mail privacy policy.     

Drug testers versus nontesters: Human resources managers’ perceptions and organizational characteristics

Survey responses from 134 human resources managers (50 from drug testing and 84 from nontesting organizations) indicated that representatives from drug testing organizations were no less likely than their counterparts from nontesting organizations to know that drug tests cannot assess performance impairment. However, awareness of this limitation of drug testing was associated with greater perceptions of testing as invasive of privacy and unsound for dealing with drug use in the workplace. The prevalence of drug testing was related to organizational size and industry type, but unrelated to perceptions of employee’s drug use. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Electronic Monitoring to Promote National Security Impacts Workplace Privacy

This paper explores electronic workplace monitoring in light of the USA PATRIOT Act—federal legislation with a national security focus that expands the likelihood of electronic workplace monitoring to assist government investigators. The paper examines federal laws that cover the privacy rights of at-will employees in the context of electronic workplace monitoring, including recent cases that have narrowed employee privacy rights. The paper argues that business justifications for electronic workplace monitoring have been bolstered by national security concerns, resulting in decreased expectations of privacy in the workplace for at-will employees. There are persuasive arguments that employers should exercise restraint in the use of information obtained through electronic monitoring in discipline and discharge decisions related to at-will employees. These arguments in favor of exercising restraint flow from the text of the USA PATRIOT Act and consider the risk of discrimination lawsuits.     

Workplace Privacy: Employee Relations and Legal Implications of Monitoring Employee E-mail Use

The tradeoff between employees’ workplace privacy and employers’ need to protect company assets, safeguard proprietary information, and avoid costly litigation has been receiving increased attention (Lee and Kleiner 2003; Mello 2003; National Workplace Institute 2004). This tradeoff often favors employers, as the legal system provides much leeway for employers to monitor employees’ electronic communications in the workplace. However, employers need to consider the effect such monitoring has on their employees since employee and employer attitudes about monitoring often diverge. In this article, we explore workplace email monitoring from both employee relations and legal perspectives and discuss implications for employee morale. An earlier version of this research was presented at the 2005 Association on Employment Practices and Principles Conference, Baltimore, MD.     

Privacy and Personnel Selection: Reciprocal Rights and Responsibilities

Previous models of invasion of privacy in selection have stressed applicant rights to the exclusion of applicant responsibilities, and have slighted organizational incumbents' needs to acquire accurate knowledge about prospective co-workers. To correct this imbalance, a reciprocal model, enumerating and justifying possible rights and responsibilities of applicants, organizational management, and organizational incumbents, is postulated. This normative model is contrasted with the current mistrust that characterizes many selection interactions. Propositions suggesting ways of gaining the information that organizations require, while still respecting the privacy needs of applicants, are advanced. Tentative suggestions for how human resource professionals could initiate these positive changes are suggested as well.     

网站隐私权政策评价指标体系研究

国内的绝大多数网站上公布了其与隐私权相关的政策,但这些政策完善程度及优劣缺乏相应的评价模型及方法,用户无法根据网站的隐私权政策进行网站的使用选择。因此,本文结合相关文献、法律规定和实践,利用层次分析法构建了一个对网站隐私权政策进行评价的指标体系,为网络用户的评价提供依据。     

Organizational Surveillance of Computer-Mediated Workplace Communication: Employee Privacy Concerns and Responses

Email, social media, and other types of computer-mediated workplace communication tools can enhance flexibility in how employees perform their jobs, expand networking opportunities, increase profits, cut costs, and enable collaboration among diverse groups across the globe. Despite their advantages, these technology tools can also cause security breaches, financial loss, employee distraction, and lawsuits. To prevent such damaging consequences, many companies monitor their employees’ computer-mediated workplace communication. However, this surveillance is often met with resistance from employees as it taps into concerns over workers’ privacy rights, due process, and fairness. We examine these employee concerns through an empirical study of full-time working adults’ beliefs about their computer-mediated workplace communication privacy and their evaluations of organizational justice, trust in upper management, and commitment to the organization. Our results suggest that employees who perceive less computer-mediated workplace communication privacy tend to view their organization’s policies as less fair, trust upper management less, and demonstrate less commitment to their organizations. Furthermore, results indicate that procedural justice mediated the relationship between privacy and organizational commitment and moderated the relationship between privacy and organizational trust.     

Evaluating employee integrity: Moral and methodological problems

This paper reviews the research on proprietary paper and pencial tests of integrity or honesty, which have effectively supplanted polygraph examinations in evaluating the moral attributes of employees and applicants. Moral integrity is a complex issue that encompasses more than conventional notions of honesty and is difficult to operationalize as a psychological trait or construct. Integrity test questions are largely derived from polygraph interrogations and the tests validated through polygraph results. The field studies reviewed and an exploratory test cast doubt on the ability of these paper and pencil instruments to meet standards of construct validity. Other studies show promise of predictive validity in some situations. Unfortunately, the research designs used to substantiate the predictive powers of integrity tests failed to hold other workplace influences constant. In light of these findings, employers are urged to exercise caution in the use of these tests until further independent research is reported because of potential infringements on privacy and equal opportunity.     

Fetal protection policies: A threat to employee rights?

Corporations utilizing toxic substances in the workplace are faced with the possibility that the use of those substances will cause reproductive damage in their employees. In the face of complex and confusing government regulation on the issue and scientific uncertainty about the effects of many substaces, several major corporations have sought to minimize legal liability for any potential reproductive damage by excluding the fertile female worker from the workplace, Yet, by adopting such fetal protection policies, corporations have opened themselves up to a host of new problems and threatened the rights of workers.     

电子商务隐私保护的重要性及其经济分析

隐私不是一个新问题，但随着网络技术的发展，隐私问题也逐渐被放大，特别是电子商务（Electronic Commerce,EC)的隐私问题已成为网络经济最重要的议题之一。个性化服务是电子商务企业发展的重要策略，但实施该策略必须大量收集在线消费者的个人信息，相比较，电子隐私的目的在于避免或减少对网上用户个人信息的收集。另外，近几年的经验研究表明，在电子商务环境下，对隐私保护信心和信任的缺乏导致许多消费者不愿在线购买。本文试图通过现有的有关高校资料探讨电子商务隐私保护的重要性，并对其利益和成本进行分析，旨在为政府和电子商务企业进行有关决策提供参考。     

A framework for disability in the new ways of working

Organizations have been increasingly introducing new ways of working (NWW). Yet, it is still unclear how these new work practices (e.g. unassigned-desk policies; self-managing teams; telework) may affect the inclusion of people with disabilities (PWD). The framework developed in this paper theorizes the mechanisms through which NWW can enable or disable PWD's work outcomes (i.e. work-impairment coordination, perceptions of justice, isolation and privacy concerns). Additionally, we use the ideal worker concept to reason that, when combined, NWW practices create expectations for employees that can be incompatible with how PWD are often stereotypically perceived in the workplace. This article helps understand how NWW offer both opportunities and challenges for the socio-economic advancement of PWD and provides HR managers with specific recommendations to balance the enabling and disabling effects of the NWW.     

Attitudes toward employee and employer rights in the workplace

A large sample (N=692) of undergraduate business majors were surveyed in order to assess their attitudes toward 54 different employer activities that might impact on employee rights in the workplace. Demographic and lifestyle measures as well as one personality variable, authoritarianism, were also included in the survey. A factor analysis on attitudes toward employer activities revealed three distinct factors, which we labeled private, polydrug (i.e., polygraphs and drug tests), and normative activities. Mean levels of agreement with employer actions were highest for normative and lowest for private activities, with polydrug activities falling in between. All mean differences were highly significant. Authoritarianism proved to be the strongest predictor of attitudes toward both private and polydrug activities.     

Time heals all wounds? HRM and bereavement in the workplace

Over the past two years, there have been many popular press articles about grief in the workplace. Despite this recent COVID-19-related attention, bereavement (i.e., the reaction to a loss by death) has always been a universal human experience. The intention of this short concept statement is to bring attention to and spur HRM research efforts on bereavement in the workplace. Part of the challenge in dealing with bereavement is the empathy-efficiency paradox – the perception that workplace goals often conflict with the needs of bereaved employees. After providing an overview of bereavement, I explain how this potential paradox can make bereavement more difficult – not only for bereaved employees, but for managers and coworkers as well – with formal policies and practices unintentionally disenfranchising grief. I also suggest some ways to address this perceived paradox. Subsequently, several generative research directions are suggested. Given the large role that HRM plays in making the workplace more humane, bereavement seems like a topic worthy of our research attention.     

Managerial coaching and subordinates' workplace well‐being: A moderated mediation study

Taking a self‐categorisation perspective, we predict that managerial coaching affects subordinates' workplace well‐being through perceived insider status and that Chinese traditionality moderates this indirect effect. To test these hypotheses, we designed a three‐stage research method to collect data from 276 subordinates in a large state‐owned enterprise located in Shanghai, China. Results indicated that (a) managerial coaching was positively related to subordinates' workplace well‐being; (b) perceived insider status mediated the linkage between managerial coaching and subordinates' workplace well‐being; and (c) Chinese traditionality moderated the indirect relationship between managerial coaching and subordinates' workplace well‐being via perceived insider status, such that the indirect effect was stronger for subordinates with low rather than high Chinese traditionality. This study sheds new light on the intervening process (i.e., perceived insider status) that explains how managerial coaching influences subordinates' workplace well‐being. The findings also extend the current literature by adding a substantive moderator (i.e., Chinese traditionality) to explain when and why subordinates increase their well‐being when faced with managerial coaching.     

考虑隐私保护成本差异的电商企业最优决策问题——基于Hotelling模型分析

文章通过构建双寡头垄断的电商企业成本差异化的Hotelling模型,探讨了隐私提供量、单位隐私投入成本对电商个性化产品的投资决策影响。研究表明,隐私提供量在一定范围内时能够促进企业更愿意投入成本对隐私保护,但当隐私提供量超过一定量后,造成总隐私保护成本过大反而阻碍了隐私保护的进行。对于率先进行隐私保护投入的企业2来说,随着单位隐私成本投入的增加,两企业的差异化逐渐明显,该电商企业将逐渐并长期占据大部分市场,若企业1不及时改变决策,将终被挤出市场。     

Institutional strategies for dealing with sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is being recognized as a pervasive and highly visible problem at an institutional level. As a consequence institutions are establishing policies and procedures to address this issue. In view of recent legal decisions, sexual harassment can have negative consequences for the institution as well as the harassee; thus, in some institutions, sexual harassment is viewed as a common problem shared by employers and employees. This article addresses institutional strategies that have proven effective in proactively dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace.     

A Survey of Differentially Private Regression for Clinical and Epidemiological Research

Differential privacy is a framework for data analysis that provides rigorous privacy protections for database participants. It has increasingly been accepted as the gold standard for privacy in the analytics industry, yet there are few techniques suitable for statistical inference in the health sciences. This is notably the case for regression, one of the most widely used modelling tools in clinical and epidemiological studies. This paper provides an overview of differential privacy and surveys the literature on differentially private regression, highlighting the techniques that hold the most relevance for statistical inference as practiced in clinical and epidemiological research. Research gaps and opportunities for further inquiry are identified.     

On-duty and Off-duty: Employee Right to Privacy and Employer’s Right to Control in the Private Sector

The changing legal landscape of the right of the employer to control and monitor employee behavior is examined. Two distinct areas are defined: behavioral monitoring and behavioral restrictions. Relevant statutory laws and the developing common law are discussed. We also examine potential employee reactions to such policies by evaluating the reactions of graduate students to six employer policies including weight restrictions, grooming requirements, use of GPS locators, drug testing, ban on off-duty smoking, and email and internet monitoring. Students responded to these policies by determining the reasonable interest of the employer in the behaviors being monitored or controlled and the manner in which policies were implemented. Their comments suggest that employees may accept some level of monitoring or behavioral restrictions if the employer can make a convincing social account of the need for a policy. Additionally, the policy must be clearly communicated and properly implemented. However, restrictions on off-duty behavior were typically poorly received with the exception of illegal drug use.     

Managing in a Nuevo Mundo: Accommodating Linguistic and Cultural Diversity Under Title VII

This article examines a legal issue that is derivative of the increasingly multicultural character of the American work force. The recent case of Garcia v. Spun Steak (1993, 1994) is illustrative of the challenge managers can face in dealing with cultural and linguistic diversity in the workplace. Over time, there have been conflicting messages in employment discrimination law as to the propriety of employer-imposed restrictions on the use of languages other than English in the workplace. However, the basic question involves the balancing of both the employer's right to manage the business and the right to self-expression in the language of one's choice in the workplace. Recommendations are made as to how each party's rights can be balanced under the law. What will be seen is that in the nuevo mundo of work found at the edge of the twenty-first century, the interests of both employers and employees may be best served by policies favoring language promotion over language restrictions.     

Arbitral standards in medical screening grievances

Recent media attention to employer's growing use of tests to detect the AIDS virus among employees has revived a longstanding public debate over the approriateness of workplace medical screening. Under current statutory and common law, employers are given considerable latitude to implement medical screening policies. Although Rothstein (1984) has speculated that collective bargaining may provide the strongest protection currently available against the misuse of medical screening by employers, there has been no comprehensive analysis of such protections. This article begins to address that gap in the literature by investigating the standards commonly applied by arbitrators in deciding grievances protesting adverse personnel allocation decisions that allegedly have been based, at least in part, on medical screening.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1989 Annual Conference of the Council on Employee Responsibilities and Rights, and was published in the Conference Proceedings.