Can a lean e-mail medium be used for rich communication? A psychological perspective
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1998 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/98 $12.00 http://www.stockton-press.co.uk/ejis
Can a lean e-mail medium be used for rich communication? A psychological perspective W Huang1, RT Watson2 and KK Wei3 1
School of Information Systems, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; 2Department of Management, Terry College of Business, The University of Georgia, USA; 3Department of Information Systems and Computer Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260 Media richness theory has been one of the most influential theories in media choice and use for the last decade. The theory has become a controversial research issue in recent years, because some research findings are contrary to the prediction of the theory and therefore cast doubts on it. Until now, we have not fully known why and how a lean e-mail medium can be used to convey effectively rich information in organizations, contradicting the prediction of media richness theory. This paper intends to address this issue, and, from a psychological perspective, provides a theoretical explanation of why and how rich communication in a lean e-mail medium can be realised.
Introduction Organizational managers spend most of their valuable time in communication (Mintzberg, 1976; Panko, 1992). To communicate, we need media. Media richness has been a central variable in the research literature of communication (Faulk, 1993). Media richness theory (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1984, 1986; Trevino et al, 1990) has been one of the most influential theories of media choice and use in organizations (Markus, 1994). It claims that media richness is an objective and fixed property of any communication media. According to this theory, faceto-face is the richest medium that can convey rich information whereas e-mail is a relatively lean medium that cannot effectively convey rich information. Further, the theory proposes that rich media improve the performance of equivocal tasks (i.e., the tasks with multiple interpretations of information) whereas lean media increase the performance of uncertain tasks (i.e., the tasks lack of factual information) (Daft & Lengel, 1986). Hence, media choice and use are a rational process where decision makers only need to match media (rich or lean) with task characteristics (equivocal or uncertain). Media richness theory has become a controversial research issue in recent years, because some studies report that a lean e-mail medium can be effectively used to convey rich information, which is contrary to the predictions of the theory (e.g., Markus, 1991; Fulk, 1993; Zack, 1993; Walther, 1995; Chidambaram, 1996). This suggests that media choice and use may not be a rational process but a social one. However, why and how a lean e-mail medium can convey rich information has not been fully known. Until now, the debate on supporting versus refuting media richness theory has still been going on in communication research.
Further, the development of emerging virtual organizations (e.g., Business Week,
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