Abstract

The importance of face-to-face communication in collaborative projects is well understood in the literature. However, many organisations, and even governments are increasingly pushing for greater use of synchronous media such as video-conferencing to replace face-to-face meetings to drive costs down, reduce carbon footprint and improve efficiency. This calls for a review of existing theories that explain the way in which employees choose media to communicate and collaborate. Our study firstly reviews existing theories and identifies how individuals respond to new demands for greater use of synchronous media in organisations. We then present the findings from a qualitative case study in a global IT company, where we analysed the drivers and use of synchronous technology across various areas of the business. We conclude that existing theories only partially explain the way in which employees choose media in modern organisations and propose a new set of factors to encourage and support further research in this area.

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