Big Data, Little Individual: Considering the Human Side of Big Data

Guzzo, Fink, King, Tonidandel, and Landis (2015) provide a clear overview of the implications of conducting research using big data. One element we believe was overlooked, however, was an individual-level perspective on big data; that is, what impact does this sort of data collection have on the ind...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIndustrial and organizational psychology Vol. 8; no. 4; pp. 527 - 533
Main Authors Karim, Michael N., Willford, Jon C., Behrend, Tara S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.12.2015
Subjects
Attitudes
Behavior
Big Data
Commentaries
Data collection
Employee attitude
Explicit knowledge
Feedback
Performance management
Privacy
Trucking industry
Webcams
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Summary:Guzzo, Fink, King, Tonidandel, and Landis (2015) provide a clear overview of the implications of conducting research using big data. One element we believe was overlooked, however, was an individual-level perspective on big data; that is, what impact does this sort of data collection have on the individuals being studied? As psychologists, the ethics and impact of big data collection from workers should be at the forefront of our minds. In this reply, we use years of research on electronic monitoring and tracking to provide evidence that an individual-level perspective is an essential part of the discussion surrounding industrial–organizational psychology and big data. Specifically, we examine electronic performance monitoring (EPM) literature to identify how the widespread, pervasive collection of employee data affects employees’ attitudes and behaviors.
ISSN:1754-9426
1754-9434
DOI:10.1017/iop.2015.78