USING HIGH-PERFORMANCE WORK SYSTEMS TO SUPPORT INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS AND DECREASE EMPLOYEE TELECOMMUNICATION VIOLATIONS IN THE WORKPLACE

Abstract

In the United States, organizations can be held legally liable when their employees create conditions for a hostile work environment by operating telecommunication systems for personal use in the workplace. Conventionally, many organizations implement acceptable telecommunication usage policies and electronic surveillance to prevent harassing situations from occurring and to protect themselves against costly liability lawsuits. However, these authoritarian methods have been criticized because of the apparent trade-offs they cause among employee privacy rights, productivity, and the need to safeguard the firm from harassment lawsuits. As an alternative approach, our analysis shows that the development of a High-Performance Work System (HPWS) will lower employees’ propensity to misuse telecommunication systems in the workplace, resulting in the reduction of employee rights lawsuits for the firm. Our analysis indicates that a HPWS creates a work environment that ensures telecommunication systems will be properly used and employees will not have to relinquish their expectation of privacy. We argue that organizations that manage their telecommunication systems by HPWS practices rather than bureaucratically controlling them will be in a better position to overcome the legal inadequacies of authoritarian methods.