PIM as a caring: Using ethics of care to explore personal information management as a caring process

Abstract

This paper explores the use of Fisher and Tronto's four phases of ethics of care (caring about, taking care of, caregiving, and care receiving) to three personal information management (PIM) frameworks, with a focus on PIM maintaining. The author argues that ethics of care can provide a theoretical foundation for PIM by using the four phases of caring to develop a perspective of PIM as a caring process using the categories of PIM as self‐care and PIM as caring for others. The paper begins by reviewing Fisher and Tronto's ethics of care, cites research in related fields that have applied ethics of care, and then describes how ethics of care could be applied to PIM research. To conclude, the author offers suggestions for how ethics of care can be applied to future PIM research in the following areas: better understand the motivations for PIM; the ways in which PIM can contribute to the social concepts of equality, justice, and trust and how social institutions can facilitate “good” PIM.