Contemporary calendar management: Exploring the intersections of groupware and personal calendars

Abstract

Individuals create spatial, temporal, and psychological boundaries to maintain personal role preferences. We analyze semi-structured interviews with 22 working professionals to study how employees manage their electronic calendars to achieve their boundary management preferences. We explore the patterns and tensions in calendar practices, including the processes people use to manage their boundaries and the factors that influence how employees use groupware calendars. The results show that in addition to the classic boundary management preferences for segmentation and integration, individuals also have preferences for keeping group calendar information public or private. We also find that personal boundary management preferences are constrained by organizational systems and norms about calendar use. Key factors in individuals’ calendar structures are the technological affordances of visuality, synchronization, and proactivity. Boundary breaches highlight problems with the use of taken-for-granted technologies and spur individuals to develop new processes to work around organizational policies or expectations that do not fit with individual preferences. The study expands boundary management theories by introducing the concept of public and private information.