eugene kalayev - an organization’s virtual reality - organizational analysis through the prism of...

Faculty of Social Sciences

Department of Psychology

An Organizations Virtual Reality:

Organizational Analysis through the Prism of Electronic Correspondence

M.A. Thesis

Submitted by Eugene Kalayev, I.D. # 313645624

April, 2014

Supervised by Dr. Israel Katz

AN ORGANIZATIONS VIRTUAL REALITY Abstract

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Abstract

Email is emerging as a primary medium for intra-organizational communications. With the growth in

frequency of email usage and in the linkage between email and work-related processes, understanding

the dynamics of email activity is becoming increasingly valuable for organizational research and

practice. The current study employs social network analysis of intra-organizational email interactions

in tandem with a grounded theory methodology in order to present a case study of a small organization

through the prism of its internal electronic correspondence. A combined analysis of qualitative and

quantitative data offers several insights pertinent to the role of email in organizational life as

experienced by employees and managers. The study also illustrates some potential benefits and

limitations of email traffic monitoring.

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Keywords: email, workplace communications, electronic communications, managers, email networks, email

management, social networks, organizational structure, computer-mediated interaction, communication networks,

information overload, e-mail use, case study, grounded theory, organizational network analysis, social network

analysis, visualization, organizational behavior, computer networks, information systems, communication technology,

organizational hierarchy, traffic analysis, privacy, work-life balance.

AN ORGANIZATIONS VIRTUAL REALITY Table of Contents

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Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................... 2

Background .......................................................................................................... 4

Theoretical background ........................................................................................................................... 4

Personal background and motivation for research ............................................................................ 14

Pilot study ................................................................................................................................................ 16

Method .............................................................................................................. 17

Participants .............................................................................................................................................. 18

Consent for participation ....................................................................................................................... 18

Quantitative data gathering and processing ........................................................................................ 23

Qualitative data analysis methodology ................................................................................................. 23

Research questions ................................................................................................................................. 25

Results .............................................................................................................. 26

Quantitative data analysis ...................................................................................................................... 26

Qualitative data analysis ......................................................................................................................... 35

Follow-up personal visualizations ........................................................................................................ 35

Discussion ........................................................................................................ 49

Aspects of organizational behavior reflected in email activity ......................................................... 49

Value of email network analysis ............................................................................................................ 54

Limitations ............................................................................................................................................... 57

Summary .......................................................................................................... 61

Acknowledgements .......................................................................................... 62

Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 63

Appendices ....................................................................................................... 70

Appendix A: Technical information on data retrieval ....................................................................... 70

Appendix B: Pilot study visualizations ................................................................................................ 71

Appendix C: Filtering procedures applied to the quantitative data set ........................................... 75

Appendix D: Consent form (Hebrew) ................................................................................................ 78

AN ORGANIZATIONS VIRTUAL REALITY Background

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Background

Theoretical background

The role of information technologies in the reality of modern organizations is developing rapidly, as

computerized collaboration systems are becoming important, if not primary channels for business

processes and work-related interactions (Dewett & Jones, 2001; Huber, 1990). Among other

communication media, email has been especially popular in organizations. Recent employee surveys

indicate that email contributes notably to success and productivity at work (Plantronics, 2010).

Email correspondence within an organization exemplifies a social network, of the kind that has

been of long-lasting interest for researchers in social sciences. Since the 1930s, Social Network

Analysis studies have inspected group structure and dynamics by counting intra-group

communication acts. Findings of these studies were usually visualized as network maps, such as this

map from Morenos pioneering study Who Shall Survive? A new approach to the problem of

human interrelations:

Figure 1: A network map that depicts different relationships between members of a social group (Moreno, 1934)


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During the following decades various studies have employed the analysis of social networks. In his

seminal work the Harvard sociologist George Homans analyzed six social networks created from

documented interactions between employees and inspectors at the Western Electric Hawthorne

Plant (Homans, 1950).

Figure 2: A map depicting the structure of interpersonal relations (Homans, 1950)

Starting with those early works, maps of interactions within social groups were constructed. Those

maps represented actual observed behavior, rather than merely depicting the desired structure, as in

a traditional organizational chart. Another important quality of those maps is the inclusion of

various attributes of interpersonal connections, like intensity or reciprocity. As more networks were

documented and visualized, those properties and their interrelations demanded systematic inquiry.

The first metrics and algorithms for calculating important properties of social networks were

developed over time by Morenos colleagues, including Paul Lazarsfeld (Freeman, 2004).

In 1950, Alex Bavelas from MIT has inquired into the linkage between communication patterns in

task-oriented groups and various aspects of the groups performance. In a series of experiments

involving intergroup communications, differences in the group patterns appeared to affect outcomes

such as the emergence of leaders, the participants morale, the occurrence of creative insight, and the


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probability of errors in performance (Bavelas, 1950).

Figure 3: Distinct intergroup communication patterns (Bavelas, 1950)

For example, participants in topologically central positions emerged as leaders in groups in which

communications were restricted as to allow information to flow exclusively through them, as in

patterns C and D in Figure 3. At the same time, peripheral participants in those patterns reported

low morale. Those findings drew further attention to the actual rather than formal structure of

organizations. Later in the 1950s, Nadel and Fortes further developed the idea that the patterns of

connections in different groups might be similar, and that these patterns can be studied

systematically (Nadel & Fortes, 1957).

During the 1960s the field of Social Network Analysis has been a fruitful ground for studies such as

what came to be referred to as Milgrams Six Degrees of Separation (Milgram, 1967) and

Sampsons social network study of relationships among members of a residential monastery during a

crisis (Sampson, 1969). As in a later study (Zachary, 1977), Sampsons network was consistent with

future lines of division among the members of the network, thus suggesting that network analysis

bears predictive as well as descriptive ability. Although primarily used to analyze intra-group ties,

social network studies continued to be employed in wider contexts, such as ties between

corporations and the formation of meta-institutions (Mintz, 1985; Mizruchi & Stearns, 1988).

This body of research added merit to the idea that patterns of connections within a social group are

important for the understanding of the groups inner workings and dynamics. This also applies to

the strength and quality of connections within those patterns. The sociologist Mark Granovetter


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studied the discovery of job opportunities on the employment market, shedding light on the weak

ties in a persons social network which proved useful for finding novel information, while being less

costly to maintain in comparison with strong social ties (Granovetter, 1973).

Despite the growing interest in the analysis of social networks, progress in this field was

continuously impeded by the fact that network data was typically collected manually, which made

systematic research laborious:

The early social network literature was built on manually collected and processed data

about social ties. Researchers would typically observe or survey population members,

asking each to list those they came in contact with regularly for a variety of tasks and

purposes.

(Hansen, Shneiderman, & Smith, 2011, pp. 38-39)

The body of social networking research surveyed above produced meaningful insights about

organizations and other social groups despite the fact that researchers had to manually collect and

document evidence of communication acts. As communications technology advanced, so expanded

the amount of available data documenting various ties within social groups. The onset of the digital

age also held promise for new paradigms of communications between people.

Electronic correspondence within social groups has evolved gradually during the 1970s. Email was

first implemented as an intra-organizational communications system circa 1980, with several dozens

of users (Ayyadurai, 2013). With the development of offline reader programs and commercial

software packages in the late 1980s, worldwide email systems have crossed the 1-million user

threshold. Later developments, such as broadband Internet, free Web-based mail systems and

smartphones accompanied the continuing growth of worldwide email usage. As of 2013, the

estimated number of email users worldwide is about 3.9 billion (Radicati & Levenstein, 2013).


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Email is a popular medium for communication at work, but certainly not the only one. According

to the 2010 survey of 1800 employees of medium and large-size companies in four continents, 72%

of the surveys respondents had to follow up an unintelligible or confusing email with a phone call.

Therefore, phone conversations still play an important role in for intra-organizational

communications, mentioned by 81% of the respondents among the media contributing to success

and productivity, along with email (83%), instant messaging (33%) and Twitter (19%) (Plantronics,

2010).

Email seemed to fulfill a diverse range of roles in the workplace since its early days. Starting with

the early studies on organizational email, email was recognized as more than a mere time-saver for

transferring information. In a field study of organizational email, evidence was found that electronic

mail reduced social context cues, provided information that was relatively self-absorbed,

undifferentiated by status, uninhibited, and provided new information (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986). In

another early publication on work email, it was dubbed more than just a communications system,

while identifying a number of distinct usage patterns for email in an organizational setting

prioritizing work, archiving information, delegating tasks and performing tasks delegated by others

(Mackay, 1988). In other words, the email client software was utilized as a personal aid for

information management, which adds an intra-personal dimension to its role. In addition, despite

the young age of organizational email, Mackay identified significant diversity in the preferences and

habits of email usage, as well as in the reported feelings of email users towards this medium.

As its adoption expanded, email influenced organizational reality. In their classic work from 1992,

Sproull and Kiesler surveyed multiple effects of electronic communications on organizations. The

body of research surveyed in this book was gathered during a unique period, when e-mail was still

largely perceived as a novelty, only beginning to introduce changes to the traditional organizational

reality. This liminal position allowed the exploration of differences between the non-electronic


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world and its electronic counterpart, which facilitated the discovery of multiple effects. Among the

positive effects were shifts such as the increase in the speed of business processes, boosted

efficiency of team work, relaxing of social boundaries, whereas several adverse influences were also

identified, such as the potential of information overflow, misinformation and detachment resulting

from the increasing prevalence of electronic communications (Sproull & Kiesler, 1992).

Interestingly, some of these adverse effect had already been identified long before e-mail became an

established organizational phenomenon (Denning, 1982).

More than thirty years after their first introduction to the workplace, electronic communications are

ever more prevalent. In 2005, AOLs survey of more than 4000 people found that 25% could not go

without email for more than three days, 41% checked email first thing in the morning, 60% checked

email on vacation, 47% checked personal email at work, and 77% maintained more than one email

account. They referred to an obsessive-compulsive need to check it morning, noon and night

(cited in Hair, Renaud, & Ramsay, 2007). A more recent annal of the same survey shows that 62% of

respondents check work email on weekends and 55% of mobile email users reportedly upgraded to a

new cellular phone just to be able to receive email (AOL, 2008).

In todays organization the predominant mode of communication is technologically mediated rather

than face-to-face (Wajcman & Rose, 2011). A recent study has offered several explanations for the

prevalence of email among knowledge workers, following the failure of traditional media choice

theories to explain this choice (de Corbire, Wolff, Bretesch, & Geffroy, 2012). In a survey of 351

employees in a French public organization, email was found to be the prevalent medium, followed

by face-to-face meeting, and then by the organizations local network and telephone. While email is

preferred for transmission of information, face-to-face communications remain the preferred

medium for discussion. In addition, face-to-face communications are preferred when the

participants are members of the same team. Managers were found to prefer email and telephone


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over other media, which can be explained by their need for frequent communications with others.

The analysis of qualitative data revealed several organizational factors contributing to the popularity

of email: the high degree of partition between organizational units, the important role of elected

politicians who tend to give orders remotely, physical distribution of employees between different

locations, complex and fuzzy definitions of responsibilities over different projects, and the low level

of standardization and formalization.

One of the salient advantages of electronic communications for network analysis is the fact that

unlike written or oral interpersonal communications, the flow of electronic messages within an

organization is automatically documented with great detail. It is therefore not surprising that

electronic communications are being scrutinized for various purposes, of both theoretical and

practical significance. Various quantitative properties of connections between email recipients are

derived from documented electronic communications, and then utilized to obtain insights about the

social group, like community structure (Tyler, Wilkinson, & Huberman, 2009) .

Analysis of email conversation patterns between employees has also provided insight into

organizational culture, structure and performance, and leadership roles (Guimera, Danon, Daz-

Guilera, Giralt, & Arenas, 2006). Activity in organizational electronic messaging systems has been

shown by studies to contain patterns of knowledge sharing (Bontis, Fearon, & Hishon, 2003) and

cooperation between co-workers, both permanent and dynamic (Eckmann, Mozes, & Sergi, 2004).

More recently, analyses of email traffic between employees show that network brokers engage in

diverse information exchanges and this diversity predicts high performance (Aral & Van Alstyne,

2011). In a more recent analysis of email communications between officers at West Point Academy,

several parameters of email flow, such as responsiveness and the tendency to initiate conversation,

were found to correlate with perceived leadership (Fox, Short, Schoenberg, Coronges, & Bertozzi,

2013).


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This body of research establishes numerous links between quantitative properties of organizational

networks and performance indicators that guide decision making. Therefore, it will not be a surprise

if behavioral metrics obtained from the analysis of electronic communications gain further

popularity in organizational research. As networks evolve and activity within them becomes

increasingly documented, such metrics may be used to appraise the performance of individuals in a

group or the performance of the group in its entirety. If interpersonal electronic communications

preserve their dominant role in organizations over time, such analysis may shed light on the

emergence of innovative work patterns and processes.

Analysis of email networks has already provided novel insight into the inner workings of modern

organizations. By analyzing a dataset with millions of email messages and other interactions between

employees in a multidivisional firm, researchers from the Harvard Business School found that

certain categories of employees were found to be more important than others in spanning

organizational boundaries namely women, mid-level executives and sales, marketing and general

executive management (Kleinbaum, Stuart, & Tushman, 2008). Interestingly, employees in this study

tended to communicate within salary levels and with those in adjacent salary bands, but only rarely

emailed co-workers beyond this range. This exemplifies how hierarchy and other attributes of

organizational culture might be projected to the dimension of electronic communications.

This growing body of research adds merit to the idea that insights derived from the analysis of

email communications may be of practical significance to managers and organizational practitioners.

A notable amount of recent studies dealing with the challenge of analyzing intra-organizational

email communications have been performed on a database of email communications within the

Enron Corporation which was made public by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during

its investigation following the companys collapse. The original dataset included about 600,000

messages exchanged by 158 employees, spanning from 1998 through the end of 2002. About one


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third of that remains after removing undelivered messages and automatically generated

communications (Shetty & Adibi, 2004). The Enron corpus has been used for researching the

dynamics of electronic intra-organizational communications (Diesner, Frantz, & Carley, 2005). More

recently, the Enron corpus was used by researchers to correlate the process of disintegration in the

companys social networks with the gradual collapse of the Enron corporation (Kolli &

Narayanaswamy, 2013). The Enron dataset is a rare case in which real intra-organizational

communications are made freely available for research, notably due to the fact that the company

from which it originated had ceased to exist. This post-mortem setting also allowed unlimited access

to the content of the messages, which provided an opportunity to explore emerging linguistic

phenomena (Kessler, 2010). This interest in the Enron dataset suggests that perhaps more non-

trivial traces of organizational activity can be found and email communications, and that novel

computation and visualization techniques will be increasingly employed in order to study the past,

understand the present, and perhaps foresee the future of organizations.

Electronic communications between employees may contain an overwhelming amount of

information, including quantitative measures of frequency, intensity and structure, as well as a wealth

of text for qualitative analysis. Throughout the history of social networking studies, visualization

techniques have been an integral part in the analysis of social networks, serving the researchers

intention to convey the complex structure of the studied groups (Freeman, 2000; Fu, et al., 2007).

The different ways in which complex network data can be visualized may also affect potential

insights from the data. This is one of multiple methodological and ethical challenges which may

emerge when analyzing social networks (Conway, 2012). Another issue is the sensitivity of electronic

correspondence to an organization and its employees, who may not welcome the fact that their

communications are available for scrutiny by supervisors, researchers, or the general public. Another

concern mentioned in Conways meta-analysis is the possibility that organizational network analysis


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may have far-reaching consequences for employees in case management interventions are based on

the results of the network study. In this regard, quantitative properties of communications are

especially prone to be over-emphasized, which is why Conway recommends incorporating both

quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. Quantitative data is prone to be taken out of

context, and the traditional quest for rapid resolutions in business may drive hasty or ill-conceived

conclusions. Furthermore, when analyzed through the prism of electronic communications,

organizations seem more transparent and less complex than they might actually be. As long as an

organization does not exist exclusively in the digital dimension, any insight based solely on the

organizations electronic transactions is bound to overlook major aspects of its reality simply

because they occur offline. Conversely, if online dynamics is not appropriately accounted for,

diagnostic insights may suffer from blind spots, which may be substantial depending on the degree

of reliance of a given organization on information technologies. Overall, due to its growing

complexity, the reality of an organization is best approached from several angles or disciplines

simultaneously (Klein & Eason, 1991).

Intra-organizational communications are being extensively documented due to the automatic

logging and storage of transactions, an inherent property of most organizational information

systems. As these data accumulate, organizational researchers and practitioners are looking for new

ways in which insights from the analysis of electronic communications can guide decisions.

Performance appraisal, business process analysis and task management are some examples of

organizational challenges in which email communication patterns and content have been recently

reported to contain practical insights for the analysis of a given business process (Dey, Bharadwaja,

Meera, & Shroff, 2013). As noted by Dey and colleagues, the speed and efficiency of automatic

analysis are definitely advantageous for organizational practitioners.

However, if the complex role of organizational email is not sufficiently accounted for, with careful


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attention to the various manifestations of this role in different organizations, positions, or even

among individuals in a given context, insight may be quick but not necessarily valid. As noted by

Edgar Schein in the context of organizational culture:

we should not rush to measure things until we understand better what we are

measuring.

(Schein, 1990)

Such understanding of the complex role of information technology in a given organizational

context and its significance for future research is sought in the current study.

Personal background and motivation for research

In the mid-1990s, while in high school, I first became aware of the Internet and other computer

networks, which have fascinated me ever since. During my army service I discovered organizational

email and used it extensively, up to a point where I could confidently define it as my primary work

medium. Later, during my years of work as a technology trainer and then as a computer networking

expert, I had numerous encounters with organizations in which computer-mediated

communications seemed to me almost synonymous with work.

In 2010, I started working as an IT consultant in a Professional Services division of a small Israeli

firm which is described in the current study. I was involved in a variety of IT projects in medium to

large organizations, dealing with the many challenges of organizational computing, such as remote

work, availability and security of business data, synchronization between information systems and

more. The organizational reality I encountered seemed to me increasingly saturated with

technological phenomena, perhaps largely due to the fact that I was actively involved in designing,

building and maintaining the infrastructure for electronic communication.

The case of email always seemed particularly interesting to me, for several reasons. However not


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impossible, it was quite difficult for me to think of a work process in which I was involved, that did

not leave at least some trail in my email conversation history. My closest co-workers were the ones I

emailed most frequently, even if we were in the same room for a significant share of work time. I

saw more and more interesting dynamics develop in email conversations misunderstandings,

impulsive responses and negotiations of authority, at times saturated with intense emotion. Almost

every colleague or customer seemed to possess an email persona, which found expression in their

writing style, response time, and in variable patterns of combining email conversations with other

communication media1.

As an information technologies professional, I was also well aware of the fact that email

conversations are automatically recorded in full detail. The organizational information systems

accumulated a rapidly growing body of behavioral knowledge, pertaining to the dynamics of

interpersonal communication and other social processes at the workplace. It is therefore not

surprising that those records are becoming of growing interest to managers, organizational

researchers and practitioners. Much like Internet companies that accumulate and use behavioral data

with or without the users knowledge, it stands to reason that todays organizations will develop

practices of analysis and evaluation based on the electronic communications of their employees.

Given the case of Internet big data, it is unclear to which extent are these practices developed with

concern for the employees privacy, with transparency as to the ends and means of monitoring, or

with sufficient attention to the complex and diverse ways in which people and organizations are

affected by information technologies.

All this became of great interest to me and a year later, while back at the university pursuing a

Masters degree in Social and Organizational Psychology, I switched to a part-time position as a

1 For a formidable first-hand account of email-related phenomena, the reader is referred to Ron Webers editorial The Grim Reaper: the curse of e-mail (Weber, 2004).


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product manager in the company. While I was studying consultation, intervention, organizational

analysis and organizational culture, my daily work reality provided me with abundant manifestations

of these concepts with my attention tuned to the many ways in which they unfold over the carrier

waves of electronic communications . It seemed to me most appropriate to document these

phenomena in this thesis.

Pilot study

A pilot study was performed in order to demonstrate the use of email traffic analysis and online

collaboration data in order to visualize group interactions within a university course. Email flow

statistics and activity logs from file sharing platforms were used to construct graphs that show the

students digital communication and collaboration activity, using metrics such as edge weight and

vertex out-degree which are commonly used in Social Networking Analysis studies (for example

Bontis et al., 2003). For an inspiring study which involved network analysis based on email

correspondence between students in a university course, the reader is referred to the work of Zenk

and Stadtfeld (2010), who modelled and visualized a merger between two quasi-organizations using

email data.

In the pilot study, data was extracted from my email account only, without gathering messages from

other students. As an active participant in the group, I have been exposed to some of the groups

electronic communications, though certainly not all of it. However, even though the raw data was

collected from the viewpoint of only a single participant, the emergent patterns revealed various

characteristics pertinent to the structure and dynamics of the entire group.

The pilot study results include visualizations (see Appendix B for examples), in which distinct

collaboration groups can be identified, exchanging files and working together on project documents.

Together, these visualizations serve as a proof of concept that meaningful information can be

AN ORGANIZATIONS VIRTUAL REALITY Method

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extracted from data regarding electronic correspondence, at least in the context of this small quasi-

organizational group.

Following the pilot study, several aspects of this techno-narrative approach demanded further

development in the current study. First, the current study is set in a real-world business organization

as opposed to the quasi-organizational structure analyzed in the pilot study. Secondly, as opposed to

the single-observer viewpoint of the pilot study, the current study is based on an integrative analysis

of data aggregated from the viewpoints of the entire population of interest. Lastly, qualitative data is

integrated with visualizations and descriptive statistics in order to establish a meaningful context for

the network analysis and to explore the attitudes of employees both towards their use of electronic

communications and towards the idea that these communications are being studied.

Method

The present study is a combination of a quantitative network analysis of intra-organizational email

communications and a qualitative analysis of interviews with employees participating in these

communications.

A similar combined approach has been previously utilized in organizational research (Vigas, boyd,

Nguyen, Potter, & Donath, 2004). Findings of this study suggest that when employees are

interviewed while being shown social network visualizations depicting their usage of computer-

mediated communications, they are motivated to retell stories from their experience, while retaining

control over the information they choose to share. This principle guided the open-ended interviews

in the current study, aiming to preserve the participants freedom to elaborate where they felt

comfortable. Another notable insight noted by Vigas and colleagues and implemented in the

current study is that meaning can be derived from the structural traces of email archives, without

accessing the content of messages.


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Participants

The studied organization is a small-sized private company, established in 2008 as a result of a

merger between two companies. During the period of the study, the principal structure of the

organization remained static, with two well-defined business units, each headed by a CEO of the

original pre-merger companies. The two groups differ considerably in their structure, procedures

and work style. The section below contains background information about each group, with respect

to those differences.

The organizational chart of both groups is shown below:

Figure 4: the Companys organizational chart.

The first unit (Professional Services or PS group) is offering consulting and integration services to

IT departments, primarily in the realm of server-based computing and virtualization. The PS group

includes 6 IT consultants (all male, age spanning from early 20s to late 30s), a CTO (male, late 30s)

leading the team of consultants, three account managers (male, 40s), an administrative assistant

(female, 30s) and a CEO (male, 50s).


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Consultants working in the PS group are working independently at customer sites, while reporting

progress to the CTO daily, via telephone and email. The work style of a consultant in the PS group

is largely independent, with every consultant assigned to a distinct portfolio of projects. Some long-

term relationships with customers span various projects, but most commonly a single consultant is

working on each project. Face-to-face communication between the consultants is limited to

infrequent projects on which more than one consultant is employed at a time, and to bi-weekly

meetings conducted at the office in the presence of all group members, the CTO, the account

managers, and sometimes the CEO.

The CTO serves both as the leading technical expert and as a projects manager of the PS group. He

is involved primarily in planning and monitoring projects, rarely intervening personally in actual

technical work on customer sites. Supervision is performed by maintaining contact with both

consultants and customers, primarily via workday summary emails sent by the consultants at the end

of each workday to report on their progress and raise open issues. Telephone calls between the CTO

and the consultants also happen on a daily basis, mainly for brief technical consultations. The CTO

also conducts telephone calls and face-to-face meetings with customers to gather feedback and plan

future activities.

The account managers are responsible for generating workload by converting business

opportunities into billable hours, which involves frequent meeting with new or potential customers

to negotiate future commitments. An account manager may contact a consultant directly for updates

on the status of a project, but most commonly such input is provided by the CTO.

Despite the intensive workload, the general work atmosphere in the PS group is calm and

supportive, notably due to the CTOs personal communication style. The success of projects is

believed to depend considerably on the quality of the relationship with the customer, so the

consultants are encouraged to be highly available and responsive to the customers. Accountability is


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valued and promoted via continuous sharing of progress and status updates, both internally and with

the customers, as well as by emphasizing the importance of planning, scheduling, and reporting of

billable hours. Lateral communication within the team is encouraged, mainly for sharing professional

information and advice, but is hardly crucial for day-to-day operations. The team structure is

somewhat hierarchical, with little CEO involvement in the everyday business of the consultants.

The CEO of the PS group is coordinating the companys financial affairs, business development

and partnerships, working predominantly in the company offices. The CEO meets with the account

managers and the CTO on a bi-weekly basis to discuss the status of different customer projects and

prospective leads. The administrative assistant is a part-time worker, handling billing reports,

sending invoices to customers, scheduling meetings and coordinating logistics.

During the period of the study, the staff of the PS group underwent several changes. In July 2010,

the team consisted of four consultants, including myself. In 2011, I transferred to the SW team and

one other consultant left the company. Subsequently, a total of five new consultants were hired over

the course of the three-year period, four of them remained on the staff as of July 2013. Two new

accounts managers were hired during 2013. In total, the PS group grew from 8 to 12 employees

during the period of the study.

The second unit (Software Solutions or SW group) specializes in the development of software for

organizational information systems and comprises 5 software developers (4 male, one female, 20s

30s), a product manager (myself), an IT operations professional (male, 40s), a project manager

(female, 30s), a sales manager (male, 40s), and a CEO (male, 30s). The SW groups operations are

focused primarily on a single software product, designed for information system administrators.

Developers work exclusively from the companys offices, spending the majority of their work time

together in a single communal work space. Managers of the SW group are at the office for the

majority of their work time. Managers are located in pairs in separate offices, while frequently


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visiting the developers space and convening in the conference room. The work culture of the team

is loose, with few formal deadlines and pre-scheduled meetings. Agility and flexibility are valued in

the SW group, and formal software development conventions are often set aside to achieve results

in a speedy manner. Communications within the group are lively and largely informal, with frequent

interruptions and heated debates. Supervision and management, as well as other day-to-day

communications within the group rely significantly on face-to-face meetings and on physical

presence of all team members in the same work space. The CEO is involved to a certain degree in

all company business, especially the software development cycles. Overall, the SW team does not

have a firm hierarchy and all employees have some professional ties with most others.

As of July 2010, the SW group consisted of four permanent employees. Two software developers

and the sales manager were hired in the beginning of 2011, and I myself transferred to the group to

occupy the product manager position later that year. One additional developer and an IT

professional were hired during 2013, so as of July 2013 the SW group comprised a total of 10

employees. This significant growth is primarily due to the success of the flagship product, first

launched in August 2011.

Several overlaps exist between the organizational structures of the two groups. The CEO of the PS

group is also a CFO of the entire company, and the CTO has responsibilities in the product

management board of the SW team. The administrative assistant performs various tasks pertinent to

both teams, and the SW group members have some professional interaction with the consultants.

Corporate events such as holiday toasts, parties and field trips are generally held in the presence of

the entire staff of both groups, for a total of three-four such meetings a year.


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Consent for participation

The companys two CEOs have been notified regarding the intention to conduct the study and

have given their general approval for extracting the data from the companys servers and for

interviewing employees at their workplace. It was agreed that the organizations name and the

identities of the consenting participants will remain withheld in order to protect the privacy of the

employees and the confidentiality of any potentially sensitive business information.

Initially, I approached the participants with an oral explanation of the objectives of the study, as

well as its procedures and methods. By means of a written consent form, they were requested to

allow access to their electronic correspondence and to participate in a one-to-one interview (see

Appendix D). When the research methods were explained to the participants, it was emphasized that

that their identity will not be published and that the content of their messages and documents will

never be accessed for the studys purposes. The fact that the analyzed data only included intra-

organizational communications came up several times while talking to the participants. To some,

this restriction seemed particularly important.

Upon consent, the participants were invited to a follow-up interview, during which they will be

shown the graphical representation of their electronic correspondence and invited to share their

thoughts on topics such as their usage of email at work, their opinion on the visualizations

depiction of their role in the organizational structures, as well as their thoughts and concerns

regarding participation in the study. In the spirit of grounded theorys All Is Data approach, the

employees concerns and objections regarding their privacy were not seen as methodological

obstacles, but rather as information directly relevant to the core interest of the study.

From an ethical standpoint, it is important to note several factors that may have contributed to the

high participation rate. I have approached the employees as a researcher, but at the same time I was


23

occupying a management position at the company, which may have had influence on my colleagues

choice to participate in the study. The fact that I have had a chance to work closely with most of the

employees in both teams was undoubtedly another facilitating factor. Lastly, when consenting to

take part in the study, several participants stated that they had nothing to hide. This may indicate

an implicit unease with the possibility of being labeled as secretive or unwilling to cooperate.

Quantitative data gathering and processing

After consent for participation was obtained, the companys email database was scanned using

NodeXL (Hansen, Shneiderman, & Smith, 2011) to retrieve the information that comprised the

quantitative data set. This data set underwent several phases of processing:

1. Excluding duplicate records

2. Excluding external communications

3. Expanding mailing lists

4. Distinguishing human-generated from machine-generated communications

The filtering procedures are described in detail in Appendix C. The technical aspects of retrieving

email data are outlined in Appendix A.

Qualitative data analysis methodology

The Grounded Theory methodology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) postulates a dynamic and emerging

nature of a theory, which is seen as a process rather than as a concrete a-priori base for hypothesis

testing. Theoretical concepts are derived from categories emerging from the rich content observed

in a given context, using a continuous and intertwining process of data collection, coding and

analysis. Fundamental components of a grounded theory study are open inductive analysis,

immediate analysis through coding, comparing and memo-writing in parallel with data collection,


24

theoretical sampling, theoretical saturation and production of a substantive theory (Sbaraini, Carter,

Evans, & Blinkhorn, 2011).

A grounded theory approach was selected as appropriate for the current study for several reasons.

First and foremost, it is due to the opportunity to document and analyze an actual work

environment with attention to its inherent complexity and dynamic nature. Although multiple pre-

formulated hypotheses stemming from existing theories could be tested using this case study, I

adhere to a principal preference for a theory that emerges from a mindful examination of the field of

interest.

Additionally, electronic communications have never been so abundant and entrenched at the

workplace, which may entail second-order changes which call for a fresh conceptualization of the

shared meanings of work email. These in turn are expected to inspire specific hypotheses for future

research, which may or may not be similar to those already tested in classic social networking

studies.

Furthermore, the plethora of quantitative data produced in the information systems of todays

organizations may serve as a tempting source for ad-hoc theories, while the social context in which

this data is collected and analyzed might get obscured by the multitude of quantitative indicators.

The intention of the current study is therefore to advance a grounded theory of an organization

engaged in an interactive relationship with its information technology. Such a grounded theory will

hopefully attract attention to this complex relationship, within which specific hypotheses will

demand testing in the future.


25

Research questions

The study analyzes a specific case in order to advance a grounded theory, which is by definition

highly dependent upon the particular findings in the field. Hypotheses are not formulated in advance

in order to maximize the openness of the research process. Instead, guiding questions may be

formulated in order to designate the focus of the study. In this case, such thematic focus is guided

by the following research questions:

1. What aspects of organizational behavior2, existing interpersonal dynamics and relationship

networks are reflected in intra-organizational email correspondence and what aspects are

absent or not appropriately represented?

2. How can the analysis of electronic communications contribute to organizational studies, while

observing the privacy and confidentiality boundaries of the organization and its employees?

More specifically, the focus of interest of the study is the growing linkage between email and work,

and the organizational phenomena influenced by the recent developments in the field of

communication technology. Given the central role of email in a growing share of organizations,

research based on data derived from email networks is emerging as a prism for studying various

aspects of organizational behavior. This study aims to exemplify the benefits and limitations of this

prism in a given organizational setting, which may be of interest to researchers, practitioners,

managers and employees in organizations with a significant degree of reliance on email.

2 The open-ended interviews aim to capture recurring themes regarding all phenomena relevant to organizational behavior, including power structure, business processes, work-life balance and others, inasmuch as they shed light on the shared meanings of electronic communications in the organization.

AN ORGANIZATIONS VIRTUAL REALITY Results

26

Results

The studys results were obtained from two distinct sources the quantitative data set and the text

of the interviews. These two bodies of knowledge are presented separately here, while several

conceptual connections between them are explored below in the Discussion chapter.

Quantitative data analysis

This chapter outlines several characteristics of the quantitative data set, a database of records that

document internal electronic communications. These characteristics are outlined below in order to

present the quantity of communications, their distribution over time, and the internal partition of

messages. Quantitative data is presented in order to facilitate the understanding of the studys scope

and framework, without testing specific hypotheses or making inferences concerning correlation or

causality. The Discussion chapter below will outline several insights that emerge from the combined

analysis of these descriptive statistics with qualitative data derived from the interviews.

Temporal characteristics

Data was retrieved for communications that occurred between July 1st 2010 and July 1st 2013. This

time frame was bounded by two events the beginning of my work in the company and the

transferal of email services to an external provider. I selected the former in order to be familiar with

all participants and major events and the latter due to a series of technical complications that would

arise if data was to be retrieved from two diverse information systems.

The temporal distribution of messages shows a gradual increase in the overall amount of email

messages in the organization, with regular drops during holiday seasons in Israel (during

March/April and September/October).


27

Figure 5 : Email dataset statistics - messages per month. The trendline depicts the floating average.

When partitioned by year, the average number of messages per month raised from 1,727 messages

in the first year, to 2,483 in the second year, to 3,208 messages in the third year3. However, it is

worth re-emphasizing that these numbers are based on filtered data, so it shouldnt be taken as a

valid indicator of email-related workload. The Discussion chapter elaborates on the reasons for this.

3 First year starting July 1, 2010 and ending June 31, 2011; second year ending June 31, 2012; third year ending June 31, 2013.

0

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28

When message data is partitioned according to the hour of day during which each communication

occurred, the following picture emerges:

Figure 6: Dataset statistics - distribution of messages by time of day

The distribution above depicts the average daily pattern of email activity within the organization,

including several characteristics of a typical workday:

A distinct period of high activity between 8 AM and 6 PM

A drop in activity between 6 PM and 9 PM

A second bout of activity between 9 PM and midnight

Cessation of activity at night, between 2 AM and 6 AM

The distribution above was obtained by counting the number of internal email messages sent at

each hour of the day, after excluding messages originated from the organizations automated

systems. This exclusion was performed in order to demonstrate the flow of email messages sent by

actual human employees.


29

Interestingly, when the above distribution is partitioned by year (first year July 2010 through June

2011 and so on), an increase in email activity is evident for all hours of the day except 6-8 PM and

11 PM-1 AM, as highlighted in red in the following graph:

Figure 7 : Dataset statistics - distribution of messages by time of day, by year (Year 1=July 2010 through June 2011, etc.).

The distribution above includes all days, not only workdays. Here is how email activity is distributed

across weekdays (the working week is Sundays through Thursdays):

Figure 8: Dataset statistics - distribution of messages by weekday

16555 16806 1734817487

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30

Social Network Structure

As described in the Method chapter, NodeXL was used to construct a social network based on the

email communications data. The resulting directed graph included 20 vertices and 382 unique edges,

with a density of 0.952. This ratio indicates a very dense network, in which almost every theoretically

possible connection in fact exists. Indeed, when this graph is visualized using all the existing

connections, it is quite difficult to read:

Figure 9: An unfiltered graph representing all internal email communications.

In order to increase the readability of this graphical data, social networking visualization software

typically employs filtering, which allows for hiding edges with a weight that falls below a preset

threshold. It is also visually salient that most edges of the graph are thin, or in other words, all

participants have had occasional communications with all others. When the above graph is filtered

to exclude such occasional communications, a cutoff threshold should be chosen to represent a

significant communication. Heres the above graph displaying only the strongest 10% of edges,

having a weight of 991 or above:


31

Figure 10: A filtered graph displaying the strongest 10% of connections.

Those 39 directed connections correspond to the primary working interfaces between all the

companys managers and include some of the most active connections between managers and their

subordinates.

During the interviews, each participant was shown a graph of their own email activity, which is

derived from the above graph. In those ego-centric graphs, outgoing email traffic was shown in red

and incoming traffic in green, which allows for visual distinction between directions.

When the visualizations were presented to the participants, it was explained that they are based on

the total amount of communications, including To, CC, and BCC. In addition, participants

were shown an unfiltered version of the visualization in order to clarify that infrequent

communications exist, but were omitted in order to improve visibility.


32

Here are several examples of personal visualizations shown:

FT

CEO, SW group.

IR

CEO, PS group.

RV

Accounts Manager

PS group

Figure 11: Examples of personal visualizations shown during the interviews.


33

Distribution of email activity among participants

The dataset included an average of 6654 incoming communication events and an average of 6759

outgoing communication events per participant4. When differences in the participants seniority are

taken into account, the above figures correspond to an average of 10.71 communications received

and 10.69 communications sent per workday, with the following internal distribution:

Figure 12: Distribution of daily email activity between participants.

Overall, participants formally occupying a management position (displayed as striped bars in the

Figure 12) are typically more active in their intra-organizational email usage when compared to non-

managers. Interestingly, although occupying a non-managerial position during the course of the

study, participant YI was eventually promoted to a team supervisor of the PS group, which suggests

that email activity is related to emerging as well as formal leadership.

4 A reminder is due regarding the method of counting communication events a message sent to N recipients is counted as N events. Hence the outgoing communication events appears to outnumber the outgoing individual outgoing communication events.


34

Recipient types

The distribution of recipient types (to, cc or bcc) in the companys communications is as follows:

Recipient type Number of occurrences Percentage

To 109,678 62%

CC 64,483 37%

BCC 2,386 1%

Total 176,547

Number of recipients per message

The number of recipient per message ranged from 1 to 23, with the following distribution:

Figure 31 : Dataset statistics - distribution of the number of recipients per message.

1

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Number of recipients per message (log)


35

Follow-up personal visualizations

During the interviews, participants were asked whether there was anything in the statistics of their

email usage that is of interest to them, besides the visualizations they have seen. As a follow-up to

those questions, some examples are displayed below.

Separate graphs for incoming and outgoing communication

Several participants requested to see separate graphs for outgoing and incoming communications.

Figure 14: A single participants graph, separated by communication direction.

Figure 14 shows separate images for incoming (left) and outgoing (right) communications of YN, a

developer in the SW group. According to these graphs, YN receives emails from nearly all colleagues

but sends emails mainly to supervisors.

Ratio of incoming to outgoing emails

This ratio was mentioned as interesting by several participants. Overall, this ratio ranges from 1.8

for the least active sender to 0.7 for the most active one, with an average of 1.2 (meaning that 5

messages were sent on average for every 6 messages received).

YI, a consultant on the PS group, was interested to know his ratio, which to him indicated whether

he was successful in answering all emails like he tries to do. In his case, the ratio was exactly 1.


36

Amount of emails over time

Participants tended to describe the amount of emails as constantly increasing, and some were

interested of seeing a graph displaying the volume of incoming and outgoing communications as it

changed with time. The graphs below display the amount of emails sent and received monthly by

three participants (sent email in red).

YI (Consultant, PS group)

Average annual growth:

23% in incoming email

24% in outgoing email

NN (Developer, SW group)




HT (Projects Manager, SW group)




Figure 15: Examples of personal graphs showing the increase in email activity over time.


37

Distribution of personal email activity during a workday

LN, a Consultant in the PS group, was interested in the distribution of his email activity over time

during a workday. The following graph displays the total number of messages sent (red) and

received (green) by LN, by time of day:

Figure 16: Distribution of a single participants email activity during a workday.

Amount of emails sent out of working hours

Following an estimation made by participant YN that only about 1% of her emails are sent out of

working hours, this statistic was checked and found to be exactly 1% in her case. Overall, 26% of

emails sent in the company were sent out of normal working hours or on weekends.


38

Qualitative data analysis

In the spirit of the grounded theory methodology, the transcripts of the interviews were repeatedly

analyzed and coded in parallel with data collection, in order to allow theoretical sampling. Several

categories emerged gradually from the data, as shown in this chapter. For every category, the central

ideas are described and exemplified, accompanied by excerpts from the interviews which are

included insofar as they might illustrate the findings.

Boundaries

Email is used both at work and at home, a theme that emerged at the beginning of almost every

interview. Several patterns of interrelations between work and private life are evident from email

usage. Most commonly, private email accounts are kept separate from work accounts and are

reported to be less active, so email is most commonly associated with work. IL, the companys CTO

and its most active email user, is an extreme example:

I started using email at my first workplace, and to this day I have no private email

account

(IL, the company CTO)

Boundaries were a salient concern for participants when volunteering for the study. The most

common question after reading the consent form was Will the analysis exclude messages sent

outside the organization? This may indicate a desire to protect sensitive communications that may

traverse the boundaries of the participants private life. It was quite clear that work email is being

used for more than work, and the decision to agree to participate was affected by the facts that (a)

external correspondence was not included and (b) that the content of email messages was not

analyzed.


39

The ongoing negotiation of boundaries was also evident in some participants account of the

dynamics of handling email while at home or on holiday. Especially notable is the increasing

intensity of the demand for constant availability, which came about with the introduction of

smartphones. Several participants have stated that subsequently, they made a conscious decision to

cut back on email usage outside of office hours:

I used to work in a different mode. I used to take my work home and direct attention to

email at all times. In order to attend to the tasks I needed work time and I felt like I'm

not resting and I'm busy with work all the time. It has been a process and it happened

during the last couple of years.

(NN, Software Developer)

Development of email practices

Email at work was perceived by the participants as a given organizational reality. Older

communication media, like fax or written memos were not mentioned at all in most interviews.

Initial adoption of email as a primary work medium was recalled as rapid and spontaneous:

Around 1993, at my first workplace, I had a Eudora email client. [] There was no

learning curve, right away there were meeting summaries and reports sent by email. []

I dont remember faxes or written memos. As far as Im concerned, there was always

email.

(RL, Sales Manager)


40

None of the participants mentioned participating in formal training regarding email usage. At the

same time, email is considered tacit knowledge which is often taken for granted:

My assumption is that email skills are mandatory at work, like literacy.

(IR, CEO)

An assumption that there exists a correct way of using email was mentioned on several occasions.

For example, HT, a projects manager, said that she knows how to use email since she used to be a

computer trainer. Thus, being familiar with the technical possibilities of email software is one

possible meaning of knowing how to use email. Another possible meaning is mentioned by RV,

an accounts manager:

My attempts to try and manage Outlook in a correct way never worked I would like

to know how others do it. At a certain stage, I stopped trying and I feel like there's a lot

I can improve in the way I work with Outlook.

It was not uncommon to hear such reports of unease and frustration with email. One reason

provided for that unease is the idea that email is not optimal for some conversations, which would

be more productive if conducted using other media, most commonly telephone or Instant

Messaging. Other reasons relate to the overall negative charge which was associated with the

participants account of their daily email experience.


41

Daily experience with work email

Email was described as an integral and inseparable part of work, a demanding and time-consuming

task. The time and energy allocated to email were repeatedly mentioned to be proportional to the

amount of work, especially by managers:

For me, its a work tool. Its what I do all day Its work thats stressful, not the

email.

(HT, Projects Manager)

Both CEOs reported that when there are no new emails, sometimes they worry that something is

wrong and the companys normal operations are somehow interrupted, which further exemplifies

the perceived synonymy between email and work. However, email was also narrated as a separate

entity, as if possessing its own will:

Email always wants to control me, but I don't let it.

(RV, Accounts Manager)

The managers accounts of their daily email-related activities were charged with negative emotion,

dubbing the relationship with email as struggle, enslavement, and war. Non-managers tended

to describe their email-related experience in much calmer terms, without mentioning overload or

stress. For example:

Overall, most emails are with the supervisors and not within the team. [] Making

your work visible is easy with emails. People who send a lot of professional emails may be

valuable sources of information.

(LN, Consultant, PS group)


42

For managers, the daily routine begins with checking the email inbox early in the morning,

sometimes even before visiting the bathroom, and ends late at night. Non-managers recounted

checking email out of work hours as well, but mainly recalled reading the inbox without sending

emails or just checking the subject and deferring the actual reading of emails to the beginning of

the next workday. For both managers and subordinates, checking email is a repetitive activity which

fills the gaps between other routine tasks. While at work, virtually all of the participants are at least

partially attentive to incoming emails in real time. Audible and visual alerts are typically enabled on

the participants portable devices, attracting immediate attention to incoming messages. Visual alerts

are also in place on the computer monitors, most commonly including a brief display of the email

subject and sender, along with the first few words of the message:

This envelope will not stay unread for long without me reading it, which is kind of a

disease I have, I guess Im not alone. I dont necessarily follow each email through

immediately, but I feel compelled to check whats wrong.

(YI, Consultant, PS group)

Some participants have reported changing the alerts settings following a feeling of being

overwhelmed or distracted, others treat the alerts as given and have not considered or were not

aware of the possibility to change those settings.

According to the participants, a small minority of incoming emails require action on their behalf,

while most of the messages are merely informational. When checking the inbox for new messages

initial prioritization takes place, wherein messages requiring follow-up are marked as unread or

flagged, unwanted messages deleted right away and folders are used to categorize messages for

future storage:


43

My war with my inbox is due to its size. I mark emails as unread according to the

tasks associated with them, which usually leaves a few dozen unread in the inbox, such

as updates and news which are not really urgent to read now, so I mark them and read

later.

(IR, CEO)

The goal at this stage is achieving a clean table state, which reportedly creates a feeling that things

are under control. The number of unread or flagged messages commonly serves as a to-do list.

Stored and categorized messages are used to track the progress of various tasks.

Various practices of retaining messages in the mailbox were reported. Some participants store all or

most of incoming email, while others tend to delete all messages except those highly likely to be

useful in the future. One notable practice is sending emails to oneself to serve as a reminder or a

long-term record of important data, such as passwords or contact details.

Meanings attributed to email flow dynamics

By and large, the participants most stable work relationships were reported to be accompanied by

continuously active email correspondence. Temporary projects, ad-hoc questions and other short-

term collaborations were also reported to take place over email. When asked what can be learned

about the organization by analyzing the email flow (while disregarding the content), the participants

related several interpretational tactics, for example:

Starting an email conversation shows initiative, but someone sending an excessive

amount of email queries may be perceived as overly dependent.

(FT, CEO)


44

When relating to the email flow charts, several participants asked whether the charts include both

To and CC recipients. Some are particularly attentive to this distinction, reporting that they take

the time to arrange their recipients in a certain way in the To and CC fields of all messages

directed to multiple recipients. CC recipients are assumed to be included in the conversation on an

informational basis, and no response is expected of them. The distribution of messages in which

only To recipients are shown was believed to be more representative of crucial connections in the

company. When a certain recipient is the only one in the To: field of a message, they are assumed

to be exclusively responsible for responding to the message and for all actions required to deal with

the issue at hand. Therefore, those who appear more frequently in the To: field of intra-

organizational messages are believed to be more important for the functioning of the firm.

Feelings about email monitoring

When asked whether analyzing email traffic may be useful, the most common reaction was maybe

in larger organizations, here we know everything anyway. Some have mentioned the variance

between email usage practices of different employees, which may lead to misled assessments.

Managers have mentioned that measuring performance via email may be appropriate in cases in

which unequivocal meaning can be attributed to the dynamics of email traffic, such as response time

with front-line employees. For other employees, active email usage may indicate slacking or

ineffective work.

Most participants reported awareness of the fact that their email communications may be

monitored, but are reluctant to accept the possibility of this actually happening:

Before one of my team members resigned, I could have seen it coming if I tracked his

emails. Personally, I absolutely oppose such supervision. If youre a good manager you

will know it without spying on your employees. People who know theyre followed this


45

way will be defensive and seek other communication channels.

(IL, CTO)

Alongside those objections, employees performance is reported to be already appraised in several

ways with the help of their email activity, at least implicitly. Quality of correspondence helps assess a

team members contributions and relative frequency of communications may indicate the quality of

a relationship between a manager and a subordinate employee:

It is somewhat sensitive, but as a manager I dont feel like Im crossing a line. If as a

manager you want to warn someone whos talking to someone else too much, theres no

real difference if you look at it in real life or by email. Or the opposite if someone fails

to contact their subordinates for a year, that may indicate managerial neglect.

(IR, CEO, PS group)

Similar reasoning may extend to assessment of customer relationships, as noted repeatedly by the

companys account managers. Although external communications were not analyzed here, several

participants stated that the frequency of email communications with customers is indicative of the

level of attention which different accounts receive from the firm, and thus would be interesting to

explore.

Aspects of organizational culture reflected in email

Several facets of organizational culture are notable in the participants account of their email usage.

For example, the CEO sends birthday greetings to all employees, while CCing the entire company,

which he intends as a motivational token. Workday summaries are sent by members of the

Professional Services team at the end of each day, outlining the work performed and the relevant


46

open issues. Employees of the entire company send monthly reports of billable hours and expenses.

Those are mandatory rituals which have a functional purpose, but also bear symbolic meaning of

accountability and discipline.

Workday summaries and other reports of progress are often received with praise, while senior

management is included as CC:

I use this to promote or praise someone if front of everyone. [] I use this for positive

feedback for instance, like including IR [the CEO] in the communication, just for the

PS team members to see that it is happening in from of him.

(RV, Accounts Manager)

Participants have repeatedly noted that they have nothing to hide and that they feel like the

companys affairs are fairly transparent anyway. This statement may be interpreted as defensive, but

is still notable as a testimony to the organizational culture.

The role of other communication media

Face-to-face communication, telephone calls and instant messaging applications all appear to be in

use in the organization. However, their role in work processes seems less systematic. For example,

most employees in the PS group work on separate projects at different locations (less face-to-face

meetings), their use of telephone is described as frequent, and there exists an operational WhatsApp

group, albeit reportedly much less active than email. Members of the development team share the

same workspace and rarely use telephone or IM for communications within the group. A WhatsApp

group created by HT, the projects manager, operates within the SW group, again much less active

than email. Conference calls also occur, most commonly initiated by managers or customers. These


47

calls usually include three or four participants at a time.

Telephone is still an important communication medium in the company. This remark was

emphasized by several interviewees, sometimes with reservation

Other media are also used as an escalation or a priority cue for email messages, when theres a need

to receive immediate feedback on an email:

I sometimes receive an email accompanied by a phone call or a text message, so there is

no choice and I have to attend to it.

(NN, Developer, SW Group)

In the context of information file sharing and collaboration, technologies like Dropbox and

ShareFile are used by most participants, somewhat outplacing the practice of sending documents as

attachments. Email messages frequently contain links and references to files stored on these

platforms and are sent to attract attention or demand feedback regarding shared documents.

Written notes are used by some for managing personal information, like tasks and ideas. Use of

written notes for interpersonal communication within the company has not been observed or

reported, neither is the use of fax or traditional mail.


48

Meanings attributed to content characteristics

Participants have described several assumptions and heuristics they use when interpreting the

language of email messages. Several examples of such heuristics:

Punctuation marks and capitalizations convey intense emotion, such as anger and

frustration.

Tidy text formatting and structure of the email, as well as a length of the text are reported

to indicate the senders thoroughness.

Participants report that some emails they write are a product of considerable time and effort.

Messages sent within a close-knit team are reported to be laconic and chat-like. Otherwise, overly

concise replies were perceived to convey a lack of interest.

AN ORGANIZATIONS VIRTUAL REALITY Discussion

49

Discussion

The following chapter will summarize the findings on both research questions: aspects of

organizational behavior reflected in email activity and the value of email analysis for organizational

science. Several limitations are then discussed and directions for future research are suggested.

Aspects of organizational behavior reflected in email activity

In the current case study email is reportedly involved in the majority of business processes and is

actively used for intra-organizational communication. The most active email users are managers,

while non-managerial staff report using email primarily for communications with their supervisors.

Therefore, email in this case is primarily utilized by managers or for them, a bias consistent with

prior findings regarding the choice of media for work-related communications (de Corbire et al.,

2012). This finding has several important implications. First, it suggests that a pattern of intensive

email usage is characteristic of a leadership position, whether formal or emerging. Furthermore, in

light of this finding email-related behavior can be viewed as a channel for communicating

organizational values, implicitly or explicitly. Supported by the existing finding that subordinates

tend to follow their supervisors email-related behavior (Brown, Killick, & Renaud, 2013), it is

important to recognize the role of managers when considering interventions in email-related

organizational behavior. In a wider context, inasmuch as the managers tendency to rely on email is

common in other organizations, it stands to reason that email should be of particular interest in

management research.

Several temporal patterns of email usage emerge from the material gathered in the current study. By

and large, emails are read and sent as a first activity of the workday, then at varying intervals during

the day. Constant, if partial, attention to the email inbox is maintained throughout the workday, and

frequently extends to after-work hours and weekends. When coming back to the workplace after a

AN ORGANIZATIONS VIRTUAL REALITY Discussion

50

break, or when finishing a meeting or a telephone call, participants report checking email as a means

of getting back to work. At the same time, some participants recounted perceiving incoming

emails as interruptions or distractions demanding immediate attention. These findings reveal that

despite the asynchronous nature of email as a technology, incoming email communications at the

workplace tend to interrupt the recipients current activity. The degree of interruption may vary

from a brief glance to a deliberate redirection of attention to process the incoming message, but

overall the participants reported having to resist the urge to attend to incoming emails. In light of

these findings, viewing email as an asynchronous medium might be unwarranted, as previously

noted by computer science researchers (Jackson, Dawson, & Wilson, 2003).

Among active email users, checking the inbox tended to be described as compulsive. Visual and

audible alerts about incoming emails are enabled on most computer workstations and smartphones

in the company, most frequently with little or no changes to the default settings. Although

participants reported knowing that alerts can be tuned to change their frequency or level of

intrusiveness, they tend to retain the default alerts settings. Furthermore, they report giving little or

no thought to the possibility of adjusting the alert settings to better serve their goals at work. This

behavior might be based on the assumption that the company values employees who are constantly

attentive to the companys business. Even if true, this assumption does not have to mean that a

constantly beeping phone makes a better employee or a more effective manager. In a wider context,

this finding suggests that organizations and their inhabitants might benefit from being more

attentive to the effect different alert settings might have on such aspects of work life as productivity,

time management, and quality of communications.

The studys participants have voiced considerable frustration resulting from the tension between

the desire to be informed at all times and the need to focus on the task at hand. There is also

evidence, both narrative and quantitative, of deliberate withdrawal from checking email at home

AN ORGANIZATIONS VIRTUAL REALI

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