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Homework Help: Social Studies: World Issues: Media in the Workplace
by Christopher Davis
New Media Types:
The Possible Cause of Interruption and Overload in the Workplace
New types of media have become available to many people. This proliferation of new media has changed the distribution and volume of communication between people on a daily basis. Kraut and Attewell study this new phenomenon and its effects within a large corporation (Kiesler 1997). The greater volume of communications made possible by e-mail and other mediums may serve to further inundate and interrupt employees while also widening the information gap between the peripheral and the core employees. The two predominant forms of communication are synchronous and asynchronous with such media as telephone, face-to-face conversation, and video conferencing being synchronous, and such media as e-mail, fax, and electronic bulletin boards being asynchronous; synchronous requiring both sender and receiver to engage simultaneously, and asynchronous requiring little to no simultaneous coordination between sender and receiver (Kiesler 1997). All communication requires energy expenditures and time commitment, but synchronous communication exacts a much higher toll than asynchronous communication. The different media have different levels of expressiveness and richness to them with face-to-face communication being both the most expressive and taxing, and electronic bulletin boards being both the least expressive and taxing. However the expressiveness and costliness of a medium do not go hand in hand: e-mail is considered as expressive, but not as taxing, as live conversation. Kraut and Attewell address the issue of new media by investing whether or not the "rich mix of communication media available... result[s] in more communication" to the benefit or detriment of a large corporation that needs the new mix of communication to operate effectively.
Attewell and Kraut ask the question of how the "new proliferation of communications media change[s] the distribution and volume of interaction" in a large organization. To answer the question Attewell and Kraut administer a multi-level survey to the employees of a multinational banking corporation. Once all of the data and correlations are collected from those employees that chose to respond a greater picture of the answer to their question can be compiled and analyzed. To focus the research question Kraut and Attewell center their inquisition on two points of "particular salience in [the] corporate setting: are the survey's participants better informed or do they only experience more "interruption and information overload" as a result of all the information rich media.
The data collected through Kraut and Attewell's manifold survey indicates that interruption is marginally higher and overload is no greater than could be expected, with the overall effect of so much communication being quite beneficial to all initiators and receivers of information sharing (Kiesler 1997.) The charts presented by Kraut and Attewell reveal that an employee communicating heavily via one modality would "tend to communicate heavily in others" and be better informed and committed to the organization, regardless of how peripheral he or she may be. Their survey further indicated the problems of overload and interruption were not problems at all thanks to the predominant form of interpersonal communication, e-mail, being asynchronous. The banking corporation being surveyed by Kraut and Attewell is a successful multinational business and its use of the rich new mediums of communication is beneficial, even in some unanticipated ways. Important to note is that the survey revealed the great proliferation of communications media in a large corporation resulted in all of the employees reporting expectantly higher volumes of interruption of the work day; equally noteworthy is the fact that the drastic increase in information sending and reception did not result in significant reports of any kind of overload.
Kraut and Attewell's research provides a clear answer to the question raised by new media's "many potential effects." The results of their survey provide quantitative data indicating overload is not a problem aggravated by the new media. Increased communication comes at a cost of energy and interruptions and surprisingly neither the cost nor the interruptions of communications media is bad enough to be especially noteworthy. The levels of added interruption are higher as expected, but not unreasonably so. Thanks to the new media employees feel more committed to the corporation regardless of status or geographic proximity to the central head quarters and are also better informed thanks to the new communication mediums (Kiesler 1997.)The proliferation of new media in large organizations has increased the distribution of information to allow all employees to be better informed, and has also increased the volume of the information being shared amongst employees, but not to the point of being wholly disruptive or detrimental to the work environment.
References
Kraut, Robert E., Attewell, Paul. "Media Use in a Global Corporation: Electronic Mail and Organizational Knowledge." The Culture of the Internet. Ed Sara Kiesler. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 1997. 323-342
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