Bossware| More Than Monitoring: Grappling With Bossware—Introduction

Abstract

Bossware, or employee-monitoring software, has grown significantly during and after the pandemic to extensively and invasively surveil remote workers. Tracking app use, mouse clicks, and keystrokes through cloud-based systems, it provides a fine-grained portrait of worker activity, quantifying “productivity” and flagging anomalies. Despite its recent rise, scholarly research is limited, necessitating deeper understanding. This Introduction first provides an overview of bossware and discusses its promises and problems. For proponents, it optimizes productivity and bolsters security; for critics, it increases distrust and intensifies pressures on workers. The Introduction then steps through each contribution to this issue: Barili demonstrates how Time Doctor and Teramind amplify competition and distrust; Ye and Zhao study Chinese workers’ ambivalent responses and resistances; and Cinque critiques Microsoft Viva, showing how it reframes workers as quantifiable productivity units. The Introduction concludes by stressing the need for interdisciplinary research to address bossware’s complex implications for contemporary labor.