Why Discard When You Can Keep Them? A Case Study on the E-Mail Retention Behaviour in Firms

Firms are increasingly required to consciously retain and dispose of specific information as part of an effort to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory mandates. While e-mails represent a major part of all corporate records, they can be used as electronic evidence in legal investigations and compliance audits. However, the decision towards e-mail retention or disposal is often incumbent upon employees in the course of performing their jobs. This paper presents the results of a case study seeking to uncover how and why employees retain e-mails. We employ qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, thereby analysing mailboxes of 20 employees and more than 700,000 e-mails. Our findings point towards different types of employee behaviour and a fractional tendency to hoard vast amounts of e-mail pursuing a 'keep everything forever' mentality. Based on the consolidated findings, we elaborate a set of propositions, highlight the organisational implications and suggest opportunities for future research.