Singer, Janice A.

Vinson, Norman G.

English

Cognitive Sciences ePrint Archive

National Research
Council Canada
Institute for
Information Technology
Conseil national
de recherches Canada
Institut de technologie
de l'information  
 
 
 
 
 
 
Consent Issues Raised by Observational Research 
in Organisations * 
 
Vinson, N.G. and Singer, J. 
2004 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
* published in NCEHR Communiqué. Volume 12, Number 2, pp. 35-36. 2004. 
NRC 46561. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright 2004 by 
National Research Council of Canada 
 
Permission is granted to quote short excerpts and to reproduce figures and tables from this report, 
provided that the source of such material is fully acknowledged. 
 
 
1 
Consent Issues Raised by Observational Research 
in Organisations 
Norman G. Vinson Janice A. Singer 
 
Institute for Information Technology 
National Research Council, Canada 
{norm.vinson, janice.singer}@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca 
 
Key Words: human subjects research ethics, employees, workplace, observation, participant-
observer. 
 
(Fictional)Case 
Dr. Themis and her team of university 
researchers are building tools to increase the 
productivity of software engineers. Their 
research is performed in collaboration with a 
company that may use the tools once they are 
developed. The first phase of the project is to 
conduct a requirements analysis. In service of 
this analysis, Dr. Themis and her university team 
observe some of the company’s software 
engineers as they perform their work. 
Essentially, the researchers shadow the 
engineers for several days, noting the activities 
in which the engineers engage and the amount 
of time spent on each activity. Because the 
engineers work in cubicles, these observations 
take place in full view of the staff.  
Once the requirements analysis has been 
performed, the manager assigns a team of 
engineers to join the researchers in developing 
prototype tools. This phase of the research 
program also provides researchers with the 
opportunity to participate in some of the 
company’s development processes as 
participant-observers.  
The tools that are eventually developed are 
quite successful and are adopted by software 
engineers across the company.  The 
researchers publish several papers that are well 
received in the research community. 
Discussion 
Although the case presented above raises many 
issues related to the ethical conduct of research, 
we will focus primarily on employee consent 
(see Singer & Vinson (2001, 2002) for 
discussion of other issues). Employees are 
typically considered a vulnerable population 
(Sieber, 2001) in part because management 
coercion is such a strong possibility. In its 
section on consent (Section 2), the TCPS 
explicitly discusses the consent of employees: 
“individuals who are approached to participate in 
a research project about their organisation have 
the right to give free and informed consent.” The 
context of the paragraph in which this sentence 
is contained suggests an assumption that the 
research would harm the organisation.  
However, there are alternative cases in which 
social and computer scientists are invited by a 
company to conduct research involving an 
examination of their employees’ behaviour, as 
described above. When using ethnographic 
methods to uncover work practices, employees 
must be observed in their natural workplace 
environment, engaging in natural activities 
(Nardi, 1997). Here, the company’s consent is 
necessary to gain access to the employees in 
their workplace. However, this raises a problem 
in regard to employees’ consent, since the 
employees could always suspect that their 
participation (or non-participation) would have 
an impact on their evaluations, despite 
assurances of confidentiality and privacy. Even if 
management decided that participation would be 
voluntary, the employees could still expect a 
reward or reprisal and this would constitute an 
undue influence on their consent decision.  
The TCPS specifies that the consent of the 
employer is not necessary for an employee to 
serve as a subject of research. Only the 
voluntary free and informed consent of the 
employee is required (TCPS page 2.2). Indeed, 
it is only when the company does not consent to 
observational research that we can believe that 
the employees’ consent is free of undue 
influence. This presents researchers with a 
Catch-22 situation: the employees consent is 
required by the TCPS, and the company’s 
Vinson & Singer 
2 
consent is needed to observe the employees in 
situ, but the company’s consent vitiates the 
employees’ consent.  
A possible solution to this paradox is to 
maximize privacy. If the manager cannot know 
who participated in the experiment, employees 
will not fear reprisals for non-participation or 
expect rewards for participation. This removes 
the undue influence over the employees’ 
consent. Unfortunately, this solution is not 
possible for observational research since 
employees are, and must be, observed in situ.  
The TCPS provides for the possibility of waiving 
the consent requirement altogether, (Article 2.1 
c). However, this article requires that the 
research involve no more than minimal risk to 
the subjects. This criterion would not be met in 
our example case, and is unlikely to be met in 
general in workplace research, where 
employees are considered to be a vulnerable 
population (Sieber, 2001). 
The relationship between consent and other 
ethical elements (e.g. privacy and risk) raises 
the broader issue of the fundamental incongruity 
between the values inherent in the TCPS and 
the values inherent in the company (or other 
hierarchical organisation). Specifically, the 
TCPS’ guiding ethical principles (Section C, 
page i.5) regarding consent, privacy and 
confidentiality are at odds with values inherent in 
hierarchical organisations. In relation to the work 
performed in a company and excluding personal 
information, the values of the workplace are 
dissemination of information, accountability 
through evaluation of performance, and 
compliance to management directives (Mirvis & 
Seashore, 1982). Are the values inherent in the 
TCPS morally right, while those inherent in the 
workplace are morally wrong? In its current 
form, the TCPS would either have researchers 
impose the TCPS’ values on the workplace or 
prevent the research from occurring. It is 
unrealistic to believe that it is even possible for 
researchers to impose the TCPS’ values on a 
company (or other organisation) on which the 
researchers depend to conduct their study. The 
consequence is that the TCPS allows little scope 
for workplace research to occur. 
We expect that many people will read this case 
and discussion and immediately jump to the 
conclusion that the research presented is simply 
unethical and should not be allowed to proceed. 
However, we find this solution untenable. 
Organisational research is necessary to tackle 
real-world problems, and the TCPS was never 
intended to shut down whole areas of research. 
Nonetheless, in the absence of clear and 
specific guidance from the TCPS, the REB will 
err on the side of caution which will almost 
always be to impose unworkable procedures 
(Palys, 1997) or reject the research proposal 
altogether. 
Our hope is that the TCPS’ limitations will be 
recognized and that an expanded policy will 
allow organisational research to proceed within 
an ethical framework. 
References 
Mirvis, P, & Seashore, S. (1982). Creating 
ethical relationships in organizational 
research. In J. Sieber (Ed.), The ethics of 
social research, surveys and experiments 
(pp. 79-104). Springer Verlag: New York. 
Nardi, B. (1997). The use of ethnographic 
methods in design and evaluation. In M. 
Helander, T. Landauer, & P. Prabhu (Eds.), 
The handbook of human-computer 
interaction (pp. 361-366). Elsevier: 
Netherlands. 
Palys, S. (1997). Bulldozers in the garden: 
Comments regarding the Tri-Council 
working groups’ July 1997 draft. Available 
at: http://www.sfu.ca/~palys/tcwg97.htm. 
Sieber, J. (2001). Protecting research subjects, 
employees and researchers: Implications for 
software engineering. Empirical Software 
Engineering, 6(4), 329-341. 
Singer, J., Vinson, N. (Eds.) (2001). Special 
issue on ethics. Empirical Software 
Engineering, 6(4). 
Singer, J & Vinson, N. (2002). Ethical issues in 
empirical studies of software engineering. 
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 
28(12), 1171-1180. 
 


Bulldozers in the garden: Comments regarding the Tri-Council working groups’

Creating ethical relationships in organizational research. In

Ethical issues in empirical studies of software engineering.

Protecting research subjects, employees and researchers: Implications for software engineering.

The use of ethnographic methods in design and evaluation. In

Consent Issues Raised by Observational Research in Organisations

CogPrints Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archive

(Fictional Case) Dr. Themis and her team of university researchers are building tools to increase the productivity of software engineers. Their research is performed in collaboration with a company that may use the tools once they are developed. The first phase of the project is to conduct a requirements analysis. In service of this analysis, Dr. Themis and her university team observe some of the company's software engineers as they perform their work. Essentially, the researchers shadow the engineers for several days, noting the activities in which the engineers engage and the amount of time spent on each activity. Because the engineers work in cubicles, these observations take place in full view of the staff.(cas fictif) Dr Themis et son \ue9quipe de chercheurs universitaires sont en train de cr\ue9er des outils visant \ue0 accro\ueetre la productivit\ue9 des ing\ue9nieurs en logiciel. Ils m\ue8nent leur recherche en collaboration avec une entreprise qui pourrait se servir de ces outils, une fois ceux-ci d\ue9velopp\ue9s. La premi\ue8re \ue9tape du projet consiste en une analyse des besoins. Dans le cadre de cette analyse, Dr Themis et son \ue9quipe de chercheurs observent certains des ing\ue9nieurs en logiciel de l'entreprise dans l'exercice de leurs t\ue2ches. Essentiellement, les chercheurs et les ing\ue9nieurs sont jumel\ue9s pendant plusieurs jours. Les chercheurs observent les activit\ue9s auxquelles se livrent les ing\ue9nieurs et le temps que ces derniers consacrent \ue0 chaque activit\ue9. Comme les ing\ue9nieurs travaillent dans des cubicules, ces observations sont faites devant tout le personnel.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

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Singer, Janice

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Consent issues raised by observational research in organisations

Consent Issues Raised by Observational Research in Organisations

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