Transparency, openness and privacy among software professionals: discourses and practices surrounding use of the digital calendar

Abstract

Research on the groupware calendar system (GCS) has sought to understand its situated use in workplace contexts, revealing insights around design, culture, and self-understanding. A critical look at how knowledge workers use the GCS, and conceptualize of this use, reveals often overlooked sociotechnical values that figure prominently in workers’ lives. At a time when the public–private entanglement has become top-of-mind, this article adds to research on the GCS and professional subjectivity. It shows how organizational values circulate through use of the GCS and explores how hierarchy is negotiated on it, in part through design. It finds that senior-level workers are afforded opportunities to make their calendars private, while nonsenior workers are met with frustration when doing so. The article draws from a multi-sited ethnography, focusing on interviews with software workers in Canada. Findings suggest that the logistical functions of the GCS shape the affective dimensions related to its use.