Abstract

As work becomes increasingly decentralised, employers and employees alike are searching for tools that support (self-) organising and leadership in dispersed teams. Therefore, people analytics, as a form of algorithmic management, is increasingly gaining popularity. However, besides the alleged potential held by people analytics, it also has an inherent potential to serve as surveillance software and to perpetuate existing biases and discrimination. Whilst vendors of people analytics software provide a positive narrative and researchers from different disciplines provide extensive literature reviews, empirical insights remain scarce. Falling back on privacy calculus theory, we develop a research model to explain employees' perception of people analytics deployment in their workplace. Leveraging insights from a scenario-based online survey, we find that employees overwhelmingly disagree with the concept of people analytics. Implementing people analytics causes privacy concerns and erodes employees’ trust in their organisation to a level where they are likely to consider leaving the company.

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