Paper Type
Completed Research Paper
Abstract
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a crucial coordination option for knowledge workers who rotate at their discretion across locations and projects. Through field-based research, we find that this discretion may encompass even the act of communication. As incoming information from knowledge worker colleagues overwhelms the recipients, conciseness and brevity communication norms arise to signal sender competency and reduce the receivers’ efforts to review and respond, thereby encouraging the receiver’s participation. These meticulous communication norms result in highly structured exchanges rather than the open-ended dialogues better suited to advance the equivocal tasks that by nature knowledge workers address. Thus predominant CMC use in this context biases the knowledge workers’ shared meaning of the nature of a task from equivocal to routine, resulting in the development of less innovative solutions. The knowledge workers that adopt less rigid face-to-face communication norms to complement these CMC norms achieve greater innovative success.
Recommended Citation
Slaughter, Kelly T.; Subramani, Mani; and Kampe, Doug, "CMC Influence on Voluntarily Collaborating Knowledge Workers’ Perception of Equivocal Tasks" (2013). AMCIS 2013 Proceedings. 22.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2013/EndUserIS/GeneralPresentations/22
CMC Influence on Voluntarily Collaborating Knowledge Workers’ Perception of Equivocal Tasks
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a crucial coordination option for knowledge workers who rotate at their discretion across locations and projects. Through field-based research, we find that this discretion may encompass even the act of communication. As incoming information from knowledge worker colleagues overwhelms the recipients, conciseness and brevity communication norms arise to signal sender competency and reduce the receivers’ efforts to review and respond, thereby encouraging the receiver’s participation. These meticulous communication norms result in highly structured exchanges rather than the open-ended dialogues better suited to advance the equivocal tasks that by nature knowledge workers address. Thus predominant CMC use in this context biases the knowledge workers’ shared meaning of the nature of a task from equivocal to routine, resulting in the development of less innovative solutions. The knowledge workers that adopt less rigid face-to-face communication norms to complement these CMC norms achieve greater innovative success.