Maximizing the Potential of Contemporary Workplace Monitoring: Techno‐Cultural Developments, Transactive Memory, and Management Planning

Nonintrusive data collection and analysis technologies are increasingly being used to monitor worker behavior in the global workplace. This essay explores the factors that can affect the extent to which management, work teams, and even individuals can benefit from real‐time data monitoring of worker productivity, coordination, and performance. Leveraging organizational information processing and transactive memory systems theories, I develop a theoretical framework for how access to real‐time data can impact team coordination activities and how the implementation of work monitoring technology and analytics might be best approached. Last, I present a set of future research opportunities that supply chain scholars should pursue to examine how the real‐time monitoring of work affects team performance.