Ethical Dilemmas of Teleworking: SEVSOCDIAL European initiative

Dr. Konstantinos Samiotis, Academic Director of Online Programs and Affiliate Professor of Management Science and Technology at Alba, was an invited speaker at the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) digital conference on the launch of the SEVSOCDIAL European project regarding teleworking.

Dr. Samiotis' presentation, entitled "Teleworking with trust or with control?" focused on the delicate balance between trust and control in telecommuting.

Kicking off his presentation, Dr. Samiotis described how telework is a new and utterly different work mode, its importance, and its impact on employees. Moving on to his first key point, he analyzed some of the issues identified in current research, such as difficulties in being distinct on both individual and professional levels, employees' rapid increase of anxiety disorders, and employers' loss of control. He moved on to his next point, where he focused on the need to create new forms of control and psychological contracts between employers and employees. 

Furthermore, Dr. Samiotis stressed the sensitivity of the new forms of electronic monitoring as they raise critical ethical issues that compromise workplace trust and, as a result, the business's success and viability. He posed the following crucial question: "What degree of democratic curiosity can justify a business's legitimate need for surveillance and control against the individual's undeniable right to privacy?" The answer, in Dr. Samiotis' opinion, is two-fold: (1) the necessity for a psychological contract to determine the spatiotemporal scaling of telecommuting, both for employee and employer; (2) the significance of monitoring technologies in a data protection compliant manner to implement a privacy by design standard, promising the integration of both ethical and legal dimensions.

Finally, Dr. Samiotis closed his speech by saying, "Despite existing dialogue and pending questions about the dynamics of physical absence, one fact remains: telework is here to stay and an integral part of the workplace." 

Watch Dr. Samiotis' presentation: