Monitoring may discourage inappropriate use of electronic communications, but it can also cause a chain reaction of unexpected consequences. Kenneth Goodpaster, Koch Professor of Business Ethics at the University of St. Thomas found a company willing to divulge its experience in exchange for anonymity. Concern about preserving trade secrets led the company to begin tracking employee use of the Internet. Goodpaster says no security concerns emerged after the first week. And in particular, there was one employee who apparently had been logged on for eight solid hours in one day, from the beginning of the day to the end, to a clearly pornographic site, and the site was clearly spelled out on the printout.
Personal Web surfing on company time appears to be on the rise.
At Waterbee Toys, Goodpaster says the revelations about workers' web browsing led security officials to reverse course and argue for scrapping the monitoring. They said there wasn't enough of a security risk to justify what they were finding out. But Goodpaster says they could not turn back. The corporate general counsel saw in this a kind of danger that hadn't even crossed their minds. The computer logged on to the pornographic Web site was potentially visible to other employees.