Mapping Bossware
In this post, Luke Munn reflects on his article ‘Expansive and Invasive: Mapping the “Bossware” Used to Monitor Workers’, which appeared in the 22(2) issue of Surveillance & Society.
“Bossware” is software that monitors workers, tracking their activity in often hidden ways. This software has seen a significant uptick in interest post-pandemic, as managers attempt to retain oversight of remote workers. Some services flag employees deemed risky. Others claim to show how industrious workers are by offering “productivity scores” to management to help “optimize” their business. These techniques undermine confidence and damage worker well-being.
But if the stakes of bossware are clear, how do we make sense of it? Bossware has typically been framed in a monolithic way. Products are lumped together into a catch-all category and presented using attention-getting terms like “spying” and “surveillance.” While bossware certainly raises concerns, tarring everything with the same brush actually allows companies to dismiss surveillance claims as “myths” that fail to take into account the particularities of specific software.
What is needed is a schema of this rapidly-developing terrain, a map of the distinct forms this surveillance takes. To this end, my recent article in Surveillance & Society introduces an intuitive mapping schema for employee-monitoring technologies consisting of two axes.
Invasiveness measures the capacity of the software to intrude on the life and privacy of an individual. A product that constantly logs the individual keystrokes of a user — potentially giving away web searches, credit card details and health records — would score highly on this axis.
Expansiveness measures the broadness of the feature set built into a specific product. A product that contains time tracking, productivity scores, screen capture, project management, and numerous tools to monitor a workforce would score highly on this axis. Conversely, a product designed purely as a keystroke logger for individuals would score low.
After establishing these two axes, a broad array of bossware products were mapped. Product selection aimed to balance popularity and diversity.
There are four clusters of points which share similar expansive and invasive capabilities. I use these clusters to develop a provisional typology of bossware composed of four distinct types: spyware, totalware, soft bossware and productivity ware.
Spyware is overtly invasive but often limited and outdated software. Totalware are all-in-one platforms that meticulously monitor workers through a wide variety of mechanisms. Soft Bossware are products that (partially) temper their features in order to rationalise their uptake by companies. And Productivity Ware are mainstream products that carefully limit their invasiveness but are incredibly expansive in mediating work across the workday.
This typology highlights the diversification and expansion of monitoring software in response to demand. There are many companies, with many different product offerings, catering to a wide array of clients. As remote work becomes a significant sphere of labor and work in general becomes more digitally mediated, we would expect this expansion to continue. Bossware, then, is a key site of power and counterpower in the new terrain of post-pandemic work — and this is what makes it worthy of close attention.
