Example research essay topic: Face To Face Forms Of Communication - 843 words

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Should Email Take the Place of Face to Face Communication Early research established information richness theory to explain employees' choices of media. Richard Daft and Robert Lengel argued that "communication transactions that can overcome different frames of reference or clarify ambiguous issues to change issues in a timely manner" are rich, and those "that require a long time to enable understanding or that cannot overcome different perspectives" are lean ("Organizational, " 560). Information richness theory suggests that intra organizational communication can be ordered on a continuum from leanest to richest as follows: (1) numeric documents, (2) impersonal written documents, (3) personal letters or memos, (4) telephone, and (5) face-to-face meetings. Lean communication media, including e-mail, memos, and letters, might be appropriate for routine, analyzable tasks such as communicating rules, standard operating procedures, plans, and schedules ("Organizational, " 563).

However, lean media lack a personal focus and the ability to transmit nonverbal cues and provide immediate feedback. Using Karl Which's tenet that a central function of managing an organization is to reduce equivocality and uncertainty in communication, Daft and Lengel argued that richer forms of communication (e. g. , face-to-face meetings) are preferable in uncertain and equivocal situations whereas leaner forms of communication (e. g. , e-mail, memos) might be more appropriate under more certain and unequivocal circumstances. These authors tacitly assumed that communication in uncertain and equivocal situations must include a socio emotional, or an interpersonal, element. Reasoning that ambiguity is best reduced through personal communication, Daft and Lengel regarded e-mail as a pure-text medium unable to subsume the requisite socio emotional quality necessary to reduce equivocality (229).

However, Ronald Rice and Gail Love found evidence to suggest that active electronic conferencing users were able to add a socio emotional quality to their messages, thus making electronic text a richer medium than it was previously thought to be (101). Janet Full also found empirical support for a socio emotional component in that group members in one organization acquired shared meanings and behavior patterns through intra organizational e-mail (941). In suggesting that e-mail has become the "medium of managerial choice, " Lynne Markus argued that e-mail use is influenced more by social processes than by information richness theory (519). Laurence Brooks, Chris Kimble, and Paul Hildreth supported this view by claiming that structuring theory, which suggests that an organization's social structure influences technology, can be used to understand the adoption of e-mail (Adams, 17 - 18). These structures that affect the choice of communication media seem to be influenced by the particular communication activity.

For example, recent research suggests that e-mail is preferred over face-to-face meetings for activities such as delivering documents or circulating memos, and e-mail is preferred over telephone communication for activities such as requesting information, answering questions, assigning tasks, maintaining an office schedule, coordinating activities, and drafting documents (Sullivan 62). Although e-mail has become a dominant force in intra organizational communication, researchers have found that e-mail users often perceive e-mail messages to be impersonal and irrelevant. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence suggests that many employees feel they are victims of information overload - an enormous amount of complex information that is often uninterpretable. In organizations, information overload is often a result of e-mail abuse. For example, a recent survey of 259 United Kingdom organizations suggested that employee carelessness was largely responsible for managers' e-mail overload (Houlder 14). In addition, experts at companies that oversee thousands of e-mail users, acknowledge that e-mail users in many companies complain of receiving too much junk e-mail.

Experts recommend that employees be given e-mail etiquette training as one method to reduce such information overload (Vernon 2). Employees view e-mail as a tool that assists intra organizational communication, time management, and personal efficiency. Although written communication is usually considered to be a relatively lean medium for communication, computer technology adds speed and flexibility so that e-mail is becoming the medium of managerial choice. E-mail can reduce the number of meetings and telephone conversations, invoke employee confidence in communicating effectively, serve as a good time-management tool, and engender employee efficiency. Employees' perceptions of e-mail productivity varied according to their e-mail experience.

That is, the more e-mail experience employees have, the greater their perception of the usefulness of this medium. This finding is important because it suggests that inexperienced e-mail users lack confidence and thus are unable to take full advantage of the benefits afforded by communicating through e-mail. Such employees might become more efficient e-mail users by gaining experience through a well-tailored training program. Bibliography Adams, Dennis, Peter Todd, and Ryan Nelson. A Comparative Evaluation of the Impact of Electronic and Voice Mail on Organizational Communication. Information & Management 24, 1998: 9 - 21 Research in Organizational Behavior.

Ed. Barry Star and Lawrence Cummings. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1997 Sullivan, Christopher. Preferences for Electronic Mail in Organizational Communication Tasks. Journal of Business Communication 32, 1995: 49 - 64 Vernon, Mark. Network Communications and E-mail: Seeking Solutions to the Information Overload.

The Financial Times, September 23, 1998: 2 Houlder, Vanessa. Failing to Get the Message. The Financial Times, March 17, 1997: 14

Research essay sample on Face To Face Forms Of Communication