Appropriateness of communications media use in organizations: situation requirements and media characteristics

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine media use in organizations as affected by situation requirements and media characteristics. This paper discusses the strength of four existing models describing communications media use in individuals and organizations. The paper also presents research which evaluated interactions of multiple situation variables affecting communications media appropriateness in a survey population. Participants rated die acceptability of each of twelve communications media in each of eight hypothetical organizational situations. Situations varied based on high or low levels of three factors: message urgency, amount of message content, and distance between communicators. Results indicated (1) situations have unique and significant contributions to media appropriateness; (2) appropriateness of media usage depends on the match between situation requirements and media characteristics, and (3) situation effects are more salient in some ‘situation-dependent’ media. Another survey...

[1]  Barrett S. Caldwell,et al.  Experience, Utility and Situational Appropriateness: How does Organizational Context Influence Usability of Electronic Communications Media? , 1992 .

[2]  W. Orlikowski,et al.  Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media , 1992 .

[3]  K. Wright.  The Road to the Global Village. , 1990 .

[4]  Mark Weiser.  The computer for the 21st century , 1991 .

[5]  R. Daft,et al.  Information Richness. A New Approach to Managerial Behavior and Organization Design , 1983 .

[6]  Ronald E. Rice,et al.  Computer-Mediated Communication System Network Data: Theoretical Concerns and Empirical Examples , 1990, Int. J. Man Mach. Stud..

[7]  Paul A. Haack.  Is Big Brother watching? , 1982 .

[8]  T. S. Perry,et al.  Electronic mail-E-mail at work , 1992 .

[9]  C. Steinfield,et al.  A Social Information Processing Model of Media Use in Organizations , 1987 .

[10]  E. Trist,et al.  The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments , 1965 .

[11]  R. J. Beynon,et al.  Computers , 1985, Comput. Appl. Biosci..

[12]  Lee Sproull,et al.  Computers, Networks and Work. , 1991 .

[13]  Gary W. Muller,et al.  Designing Effective Organizations: The Sociotechnical Systems Perspective , 1988 .

[14]  J. Pfeffer,et al.  A social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design. , 1978, Administrative science quarterly.

[15]  Karen Wright.  Trends in Communications: The Road to the Global Village , 1990 .

[16]  Claude E. Shannon,et al.  The Mathematical Theory of Communication , 1950 .

[17]  L. Adrianson,et al.  Group processes in face-to-face and computer-mediated communication , 1991 .

[18]  John Short,et al.  The social psychology of telecommunications , 1976 .

[19]  Nicholas P. Negroponte,et al.  PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FOR COMPUTER NETWORKS , 1991 .

[20]  J. Pfeffer,et al.  An examination of need-satisfaction models of job attitudes. , 1977 .

[21]  Joseph Galaskiewicz.  Organizations and Organization Theory.By Jeffrey Pfeffer. Pitman, 1982. 378 pp. $18.95 , 1984 .

[22]  R. Daft,et al.  Media Symbolism, Media Richness, and Media Choice in Organizations , 1987 .

[23]  R. Rice.  Task Analyzability, Use of New Media, and Effectiveness: A Multi-Site Exploration of Media Richness , 1992 .

[24]  Michael J. Papa,et al.  Perceptual and communicative indices of employee performance with new technology , 1990 .

[25]  Andy Reinhardt.  Smarter E-mail is coming , 1993 .

[26]  Ronald E. Rice,et al.  Usage and Outcomes of Electronic Messaging at an R&D Organization: Situational Constraints, Job Level, and Media Awareness , 1989 .

[27]  Jacques Vallee,et al.  Learning the Limits of Teleconferencing: Design of a Teleconference Tutorial , 1978 .

[28]  N. Archer.  A comparison of computer conferences with face-to-face meetings for small group business decisions , 1990 .

[29]  August E. Grant,et al.  Individual and network influences on the adoption and perceived outcomes of electronic messaging , 1990 .

[30]  Ederyn Williams,et al.  Experimental comparisons of face-to-face and mediated communication: A review. , 1977 .

[31]  Ronald E. Rice,et al.  Access to, usage of, and outcomes from an electronic messaging system , 1988, TOIS.

[32]  J. Pfeffer.  Organizations and Organization Theory , 1982 .

[33]  R. Rice.  Computer-Mediated Communication and Organizational Innovation , 1987 .

[34]  Richard L. Daft,et al.  Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design , 1986 .

[35]  R. Daft,et al.  A Tentative Exploration into the Amount and Equivocality of Information Processing in Organizational Work Units. , 1981 .