Bourke versus Nissan Company

Agarwal and Rodhain (2002) illustrates that employers and employees have a mutual
interest in the success of their business. For many reasons, employees are often surprised to
learn that the company is monitoring the usage of computers and networks to safeguard the
companys secrets. Hence its important to clearly communicate with employees about the
monitoring technology deployment (Agarwal & Rodhain, 2002).
In this case the emails sent by an employee are randomly reviewed by the company.
And as the employee was found guilty of sending emails of sexual nature, the company
started monitoring every employees email accounts. When an company assures the
confidentiality of privacy within companies computers and networks, the company should not
access the employees personal emails without any notice .Which would be violating the
privacy rights of the employees. A company should follow certain ethics when it comes to
invading the privacy of the workers. And also workers should refrain from misusing the
resources provided by the company (Agarwal & Rodhain, 2002).
According to Adams, Scheuing, & Feelay, (2000), Certain rules a company must follow to
ensure to safeguard the privacy of the employees
1. The company shouldnt access the employees accounts or emails without the
employees permission or consent.
2. The company when mentions to safeguard the privacy of the employees must adhere
to it.
3. If a company wishes to access the employees accounts as per company policies, the
employees have to be notified about this when they agree to their job contracts.
4. The company shouldnt reveal the employees personal mails to the public.
Privacy issue arise due to various reasons. The Internet has been a dominant force in
the erosion of boundary between professional work and personal life (Adams, Scheuing, &

Feelay, 2000). The employees fear that use of their employers computer for personal
business may be held against them. Another important issued would be some the employees
would be just be goofing around or playing around. Some employees may take a few minutes
break in during work hours. And some employees prefer to play online games for few
minutes to relieve their stress. But a few employees get fixated on the games and dont work
during the office timings. Thus resulting in a inability to finish projects or tasks assigned with
in a deadline and cause losses to the employer or the company.
Sometimes even during legitimate business communication an employee may include
comments which they dont want others to see apart from the recipient (Adams et al., 2000).
For example: when the team manager asks the team member to redo the work allotted as it
doesnt meet the requirements. It would embarrass the team member in front of his
colleagues. Hence some messages need to be delivered privately.
And some rare cases, there are employees who try to leak confidential matters to the
other competition. Monitoring technologies are introduced to avoid such kind of issues. But
unfortunately there is no way to differentiate between the data loss and misuse of resources
and hence all systems are under surveillance (Wakefield, 2004).
According to Hodson, F. Englander and V. Englander (1999) usage of monitoring
technologies would also affect the image of the company. And in turn it develops mistrust
between the worker and employer. All companies need to make sure they explain their
policies to the employees before they are inducted into the company(Hodson, F.Englander &
V.Englander,1999).
References

Adams, H., S. Scheuing, & S. Feeley, (2000). E-Mail Monitoring in the Workplace: The
Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Defense Counsel Journal. 1, 32-46.
Agarwal, R., & F. Rodhain, (2002). Mine or Ours: Email Privacy Expectations, Employee
Attitudes, and Perceived Work Environment Characteristics. Proceedings of the 35th
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii.
Hodson, T., F. Englander, & V. Englander, (1999). Ethical, Legal, and Economic Aspects of
Employee Monitoring of Employee Email. Journal of Business Ethics, 1, 99-108.
Wakefield, R., (2004). Computer Monitoring and Surveillance: Balancing Privacy with
Security. The CPA Journal. 7, 52-55.