Outline:

Digital technologies have transformed how work is organized, coordinated, and evaluated. As more activities leave digital traces, organizations gain unprecedented visibility into what employees do, when they do it, and how they interact. This “digital visibility” allows managers to record, store, and analyze behavioral data about organizational members and to use these insights to steer work processes and assess performance.

At the same time, digital visibility-based management is anything but unproblematic. While data-driven insights promise more objective and informed decisions—often supported by advanced analytics and AI-based tools—they also raise concerns about surveillance, autonomy, privacy, and fairness. The same systems that help identify performance patterns and predict future behaviors can produce stress, trigger resistance, and fundamentally reshape how management and control are experienced inside organizations.

Course description:

This course provides an in-depth introduction to Digital Visibility-based Management and its implications for organizations and their members. It pursues three main objectives:

1. Conceptual foundations
   We clarify what digital visibility is, how it emerges from everyday work practices, and why it matters for management. We examine which types of digital traces capture which aspects of work behavior and how these traces are transformed into relevant information for managers.

2. Research perspectives and organizational dynamics
   We review and discuss current research on digital visibility in organizations, focusing on how visibility alters managerial practices, decision-making, and control. We also explore the intended and unintended consequences of digital visibility, including shifts in power relations, changes in collaboration, and new forms of monitoring and accountability.

3. Practical skills and critical reflection
   We develop skills for responsibly managing digital visibility in organizations. This includes recognizing ethical tensions and privacy risks, understanding connections to digital surveillance and algorithmic management, and designing practices that balance organizational goals with employees’ rights, well-being, and trust.

By the end of the course, students will be able to critically analyze digital visibility-based management practices and articulate how organizations can leverage behavioral data in ways that are effective, transparent, and ethically defensible.

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Explain how behavioral data is generated as digital traces in organizational settings and how computational tools turn these traces into digital visibility.

• Identify and discuss key managerial questions, opportunities, and challenges that arise when organizations create and manage digital visibility based on trace data.

• Analyze how digital visibility shapes organizational dynamics, including coordination, control, power relations, and employee responses (such as compliance, adaptation, or resistance).

• Critically assess intended benefits and unintended side effects of visibility-based management, including ethical tensions, privacy risks, and impacts on employee well-being and trust.

• Compare different data sources and analytical approaches and explain how they enable distinct forms, levels, and qualities of behavioral visibility.

• Develop and justify managerial actions that use visibility-based insights in a way that is effective, transparent, and responsible.

• Distinguish digital visibility-based management from related phenomena such as digital surveillance, people analytics, and algorithmic management, and articulate how these concepts intersect in practice.

At least 80% of the course attendance is mandatory.

Content-based input (slides)

Discussions

Hands-on exercises

Written Exam: 60%

Group Presentation: 25%

Case Work: 15%

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thomas.grisold@wu.ac.at