The following blog was written by Priscilla Arling, Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at Butler University.

The majority of Indiana businesses recognize the increased use of Internet technology in the office and are concerned about whether that use is for business or personal use, as evidenced by the existence of formal policies on Internet use by over 60% of responding companies.

Despite this awareness and concern, however, more than 2/3 of those same companies lack technology-based controls or monitoring of Internet use.  This may be either a deliberate choice by companies, a reflection of a hesitance to delve into employees' personal privacy even during working hours, or a sign that companies do not feel that abuse of Internet access (that is, use for personal reasons) is not severe enough to warrant spending funds to implement monitoring technology.  My opinion is that the latter is most likely the case.

The survey suggests that while companies are aware of personal use during working hours of the Internet, in general, blogging has not reached the radar of awareness of most corporate HR or CEO's.  However, companies may want to reconsider the lack of a blogging policy or at least assign someone in HR to investigate how employees are portraying the company on-line in personal blogs that are supported either on or off the company hardware.  Increasingly, companies are finding that individual's employees' portrayal of the firm does not always mesh with their official public image.