Are you "pulling the plug" or "pushing up the daisies"? [communication patterns]

We are becoming more and more dependent upon a broad range of more or less ubiquitous communication technologies, and these are increasingly integrated with our PCs. The more connected we become, the more important it is that we pro-actively manage our communication patterns. If not, we risk being forced to either temporarily disconnecting ourselves from communicating, or spend all our time trying to catch up with the demand for communication. None of these two scenarios are desirable. The aim of this paper is to investigate how people manage communication patterns as an integral part of their daily work. Empirical investigation of complex work in a Swedish pharmaceutical company showed a variety of means for managing communication patterns. Based on the fieldwork we present SwitchIT, an application for pro-actively managing communication modes, and discuss the theoretical implications of applying the concepts of communication overflow and communication deficiency to describe communication patterns. It is concluded that there is a need for collaborative technology supporting the negotiation of communication.

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