12.7 Conclusion

Implementing monitoring systems is often justified by the desire to become highly productive, effective, or efficient. However, such systems can be onerous to implement and inevitably distort employees’ behaviours, which leads to positive and negative consequences. Monitoring systems’ learning function is the most interesting because of its potential to really improve the intervention and steer organizations in innovative strategic directions. However, to achieve this objective, all facets of the system, including its reporting and potential use, should be carefully designed to ensure monitoring systems’ learning function is activated, rather than control and accountability functions.