managing perceived communication failures with affordances ... 2012/journal/4 managing... · lee,...

Lee, C. S. (2010) Managing perceived communication failures with affordances of ICTs.

Computers in Human Behavior, 26(4), 572-580.

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Managing Perceived Communication Failures with Affordances of ICTs

Abstract

Affordances of information communication technology (ICT) are often thought to influence

communicators‟ usage of a communication technology. This is not surprising since ICTs vary on

different dimensions; some ICTs may impose constraints while others afford certain resources.

Despite the widespread usage of ICTs in the workplace, we are still not clear about how

affordances of ICTs support communicators during ICT-supported interaction. This exploratory

study aims to understand the relationship between affordances of ICTs and perceived

communication failures (i.e. low, moderate, high). Data for this research was collected from a

leading global IT consulting company. We found strong association between affordances of ICT

and perceived communication failures. In particular, we found that textual and audio affordances

were used to manage high perceived communication failures. Additionally, we were able to

identify the core and tangential affordances of ICTs that were useful to help organization

communicators enhance their communication competence and reduce potential communication

failures.

Key Words: organizational communication; affordances; computer-mediated communication;

human perception; communication failures; ICT use



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Managing Perceived Communication Failures with Affordances of ICTs

1. Introduction

It is predicted that unified communications is going to play an important role to facilitate

communication in the workplace as it integrates different modes of communications in an

intuitive way (Costello et al. 2008). Unified communications broadly define a communication

environment that comprises a variety of communication technologies (e.g. email, telephony,

voicemail, instant messaging, video, Web conferencing, and short messaging services). These

technologies can be used together seamlessly in various combinations. It is estimated that

worldwide spending on unified communications technologies approached $5 billion in 2007 and

it is predicted that such spending will grow to about $17 billion by 2011 (IDC 2007). The

pervasiveness of unified communications indicates that organization members are not just using

a particular ICT (Information Communication Technology) such as email or instant messaging

but rather it suggests that organization members need to rely on the different resources provided

by a wide array of ICTs (e.g. emails, voicemails, and instant messaging) to support their

organizational communication activities. As such, examining the resources provided by a wide

array of commonly available ICTs is a timely and important research topic.

Indeed, ICTs can be characterized by the resources supported by the features of the ICTs

(Culnan and Markus 1987). Examining ICT in such a manner provides a simplified view of the

complexity inherent in any technological systems (Griffith 1999). In particular, Griffith (1999)

elaborated that understanding technology in terms of the features is valuable because the features

of the technologies trigger a process that helps users to understand how to utilize the technology

more effectively. Additionally, past studies have indicated that the inherent features of ICT are



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often thought to influence usage of the ICT (e.g. Straub and Karahanna 1998). This is not

surprising since ICTs vary on different dimensions; some features of ICTs may impose

constraints while others afford certain resources (Clark and Brennan 1990). These resources

offered by the ICT are also known as the affordances of the ICT (Kraut, Fussell, Brennan and

Siegel 2002). Specifically, affordances are the expected usages of the ICT that help users to

achieve their goals (Norman 1990, Markus 2005). Even though, past research has not explicitly

differentiated between features and affordances, the subtle difference needs to be noted.

Specifically, affordances are resources afforded by the ICTs to help communicators to achieve

their goals while features were simply the objective (e.g., transmission speed) and psychosocial

(anonymous communication) characteristics of ICT that result from designers‟ or users‟ choices

(Markus 2005). Hence, the affordances provided by the features of the ICTs are important

resources to enhance communicators‟ competence, reduce communication failures and ultimately

help them to achieve their communication goals.

Despite the widespread usage of ICTs in the workplace, we are still not clear about the

affordances of the ICT and their impact on ICT-supported communication. Past studies have

suggested that the affordances of ICT may sometimes hinder effective and successful

communication (Vera, Kuvan, West and Lai 1998). Clark and Brennan (1991) further proposed

that different ICTs offer different affordances and predicted that communicators choose

communication technology to satisfy their communication purpose in that situation based on the

affordances. This means that some affordances of ICT may be useful while others may not be

particularly useful to communicators during communication. Building on these notions, we argue

that different types of affordances are likely to have different effects on communicators‟ ability

and competence to manage potential communication failures. Except for only a handful of



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studies (e.g. Culnan and Markus 1987, Griffth and Northcraft 1994, Markus 2005) which have

taken a granular approach in the study of ICTs by examining their features and characteristics,

the study of ICT affordances has not been well adopted in past research (Orlikowski and Iacono

2001). The reason is that many past studies tend to treat technologies in an undifferentiated

fashion (Dennis and Kinney 1998) and do not consider the effects and impacts of the ICT

affordances.

The objective of this exploratory study is to understand the relationship between

affordances of ICTs and perceived communication failures. We argue that some affordances of

ICTs are likely to enhance communicators‟ competence and ability to minimize potential

communication failures. Specifically, we propose that communication situations with different

levels of perceived communication failures may require different types of ICT affordances.

Hence, our general research question is:

What is the nature of the relationship between affordances of ICTs and perceived communication

failures?

2. Related Work

2.1 Affordances of ICTs

In this study, we adopt the perspective that ICTs have certain material properties that may

suggest “expected usages” (which Norman (1990) referred to as “affordances”). These expected

usages are supposed to help users to achieve their goals (Markus 2005). Past studies often

viewed affordances of ICTs as the resources offered or afforded by the mediated technologies

which help to shape communication (e.g. Whittaker 2003, Kraut et al. 2002, Clark and Brennan



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1990). Several important points about these studies will be elaborated in the following

paragraphs.

First, some studies focus on a particular affordance and how different ICTs that offer this

affordance shape communication. An example is the interactivity affordance of ICTs examined

in multiple past studies (e.g. Zack 1993; Dennis and Kinney 1998). For instance, telephone and

instant message provide the interactivity affordance as they allow communicators to provide

immediate feedback. Email, however, does not provide the interactivity affordance as it does not

afford concurrent feedback.

Second, other studies consider multiple types of affordances and their effects on the

communicators. For instance, Clark and Brennan (1990) proposed a more complex manner of

examining ICT affordances by focusing on the levels of effort communicators are able to obtain

common ground during communication. They outlined eight types of affordances of ICTs and

they describe several ICTs (e.g., telephone, video-teleconference, teleconference and email)

according to whether these ICTs have the following affordances: copresence (can see the same

things), visibility (can see each other), audibility (can hear each other), cotemporality (messages

received at the same time as sent), simultaneity (can both parties send messages at the same time

or do they have to take turns), sequentiality (can the turns get out of sequence), reviewability

(can they review messages, after they have been first received), and reviseability (can the sender

edit the message privately before sending).

Third, there are a handful of studies which focus on a single ICT and examine all the

relevant affordances offered by that ICT. For instance, the new generation of ICTs (e.g. instant

messaging services) in the workplace bring along new set of affordances such as affording

spontaneous, opportunistic communication and availability notification (Kraut et al. 2002).



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Additionally, Olson and Olson (2000) extended the work of Clark and Brennan (1990) to include

affordances (e.g. multiple channels, rapid feedback, shared local context, spatiality of reference)

for the newer ICTs such as NetMeeting.

Fourth, some studies approach affordances of ICT by attempting to provide a richer and

more granular definition of some of the earlier stated affordances. For instance using the notion

of visual information, some authors went further to distinguish the different aspects of visual

information (e.g. facial expression, gaze, etc) (Whittaker 2003) or to examine visual information

that facilitate collaboration (Gergle, Kraut and Fussell 2004).

Finally, some recent studies have observed that communicators are relying on

affordances from various ICT combinations (e.g. Lee, Watson-Manheim and Ramaprasad 2007,

Stephens 2007, Watson-Manheim and Belanger 2007). Specifically, these studies have provided

evidence that organizational communication is often carried out with the help of a range of ICTs

due to the availability of a wide array of ICTs in the workplace (e.g. Boczkowski and Orlikowski

2004). Additionally, earlier studies have also indicated that organization members tend to rely on

a combination of textual and audio affordances (Reinsch and Beswick 1990) such as sending

voice memo about a written report or making a phone call for a written memo. Moreover, it was

observed that multiple ICTs are used for purposes such as to increase message clarity or

visibility (Sitkin, Sutcliffe and Barrios-Choplin 1992).

Collectively, these studies show that ICTs are able to offer valuable resources to

communicators during communication. More importantly, past research suggests that

communicators are likely to rely on the combined affordances from multiple ICTs for

communication in the workplace. Here, we propose that the combined affordances will be the



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resources afforded by all the ICTs that communicators rely upon to manage perceived

communication failures.

2.2 Perceived Communication Failures

Communication failure occurs when there is a mismatch between the expectation of the

sender and the actions of the receiver (Te‟eni 2001). To examine the mismatch, we draw on

Weaver (1949)‟s three levels of communication problems. The first level, level A, is the

technical problems which deal with the transfer of sets of signals from sender to receiver. These

sets of signals could be as simple as written speech or as complex as telephone or television

transmission. Hence, level A problems relate to whether there are any mismatches in the way the

messages are transmitted from the sender to the receiver. The second level, level B, is the

semantic problems which deal with understanding and interpretation of the meaning by the

receiver. In other words, communication problems at level B relate to whether there are any

mismatches in the meaning of the messages between the sender and receiver. In sum,

communication problems at level A and B focus on whether messages communicated have been

received and whether information within these messages have been understood. Level C, the

effectiveness problems, is concerned with how well the meaning is conveyed to the receiver.

Hence, this level is concerned with the influence of information on the receiver. Communication

problems at level C relate to any mismatches between the sender‟s expected action and the

subsequent action carried out by the receiver.

Two important points regarding the three levels of communication problems deserve to

be elaborated. First, communication problems occur at any levels may potentially lead to

communication failures. Additionally, the “hierarchical effect” of the communication problems



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at different levels should not be ignored. By this, we mean that communication problems at level

A may lead to potential problems at level B which consequently create problems at level C.

Second, the three levels of communication problems depict the entire spectrum of

communication problems that may occur during any communication process. Hence, it is vital

that we should consider all three levels of communication problems if we are concerned with any

forms of potential communication failures during the communication process. Specifically,

perceived communication failures arise when communicators perceive any levels of

communication problems that may pose threats to successful communication. Naturally,

communicators need additional resources to develop strategy to avoid any potential failures or

losses when perceived communication failures are high (Lee et al. 2007). Vice versa, when

perceived communication failures are low; communicators may need different types of resources

or may not even need any additional resources. Hence, we argue that communicators‟

dependence on the ICT affordances is likely to be related to their level of perceived

communication failures. High perceived communication failure refers to situations where

communicators perceive the existence of all three levels of communication problems, moderate

perceived communication failure occurs in situations where communicators perceive the

existence of one or two levels of communication problems and low perceived communication

failure refers to situations where communicators do not perceive the existence of any levels of

communication problems.

2.3 ICT Affordances to Manage Perceived Communication Failures

The literature has elaborated about the communicators‟ competence and ability to

manage these perceived communication failures. Past studies have shown that communication is

typically goal-driven (Spitzberg and Cupach 1984, Parks 1994) and communicators will strive to



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minimize any communication failure so as to attain their desired communication outcomes

(Wiemann 1977). As such, the skills and ability to manage communication situations to

minimize communication failures has been widely emphasized in past studies (e.g. Perotti and

DeWine 1987). It is believed that organization communicators possess the communication

competence and ability to achieve their goals within the context of that specific situation

(Wellmon 1988). To do that, communicators need to effectively utilize resources available to

them during communication (Jablin and Sias 2000). We contend that affordances of ICTs

provide resources to enhance organization communicators‟ competence and ability to avoid any

perceived communication failures during ICT-supported communication. For instance video-

conferencing systems provide visual information to organization communicators who are

distributed in different locations to communicate across time and space. However, to our

knowledge, none of the studies in the literature has investigated the relationship between the

affordances of ICTs and perceived communication failures.

Our review in this section highlighted three important points. First, organization

communicators are typically goal-oriented and will strive to utilize any resources to minimize

communication failures. Second, communicators in the workplace are increasingly relying on

multiple ICTs for communication indicating that the combined affordances from these ICTs are

likely to offer useful resources to enhance their communication competence and ability so as to

minimize communication failures. Third, due to the availability of multiple ICTs in the

workplace, it is likely that there are many types of affordances (combined or single) available to

organization communicators. Different types of affordances are likely to benefit communicators

in different situations with varying levels of perceived communication failures (i.e. high,



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moderate, low). Hence, this research attempts to answer the following specific research

questions:

a. Which ICT affordances will be useful to manage high perceived communication

failures?

b. Which ICT affordances will be useful to manage moderate perceived

communication failures?

c. Which ICT affordances will be useful to manage low perceived communication

failures?

3. Method

3.1 Data Collection

Forty-seven employees from a global IT consulting company participated in this study.

All respondents were from the IT consulting and custom software development group. Hence, all

respondents are involved in different aspects of software development work such as managing

software development projects, coordinating business and functional requirements, developing

customized software for various clients, providing IT consultation and providing help-desk and

end-user support. All respondents in the study used ICTs extensively in their work as they often

needed to communicate with team members who were not located within the same location or

time zone.

Data for the study was collected via a one-day communication diary. The diary method of

data collection required respondents to keep logs of various communication events. This method

of data collection has been used in many past studies as the means to obtain an accurate and

reliable record of communication and time activities (Conrath Higgins and McClean 1983;



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Robinson and Godbey 1997; Perlow 1999) as well as to measure ICT usage in organizations (e.g.

Hinds and Kiesler 1995, Maznevski and Chudoba 2000). In this study, the respondents were

requested to update a one-day diary of all communication events regardless of whether the

communication was scheduled or unscheduled, technologically mediated or face-to-face

communication. They were asked to record communication activities over 2-hour time periods of

the day starting from 8AM to 6PM and after 6PM. For each communication, respondents were to

indicate the time, duration, purpose of communication, communication partner(s), ICT or ICTs

used, and the communication problems they encountered. Additionally, for each communication,

respondents were required to indicate their perceptions of the communication (e.g. problems

during communication, etc). We collected a total of 445 communication events from our

respondents.

3.2 Measures

3.2.1 Perceived Communication Failures

We adapt Lee et al. (2007)‟s notion of perceived communication risks in the

operationalization of perceived communication failures. Drawing on Weaver‟s three levels of

communication problems, they identified the risks factors and classified these factors into three

categories of perceived communication risks. We deem this to be appropriate since the present

study also examines the level communication problems based on Weaver‟s categorization.

Communication problems at level A were measured using the mean of three items

relating to the generation, transmission, and reception of the message. Communication problems

at level B were measured using the mean of four items relating to the understanding of the

information in the message. Communication problems at level C were measured using the mean



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of three items relating to the action required by the receiver(s) of the message. Median split was

carried out on these three levels of communication problems variables to divide the

communication events into either high probability of communication problem occurring or low

probability of communication problem occurring.

With the median split, we were able to classify a communication event into high,

moderate or low perceived communication failure. High perceived communication failure refers

to situations with high probability that all three levels of communication problems would occur.

Moderate perceived communication failure refers to situations with high probability that only

one or two levels of communication problems would occur. Low perceived communication

failure refers to situations with low probability that all three levels of communication problems

would occur.

3.2.2 Affordances of ICTs

The affordances of the ICTs were directly measured based on the respondents‟ self-

reported ICT usages. Specifically, affordances of ICTs refer to the combined affordances

provided by the ICTs (either single ICT or multiple ICTs) respondents used during a particular

communication event. Besides indicating all the technologies used during communication,

respondents were also required to indicate in the communication diaries if any communication

partners were having face to face (FTF) communication during the same communication event.

All the ICTs and FTF variables are binary variables with “1” indicating the existence of the

ICT/FTF in that communication event and “0” otherwise. The ICTs available to all respondents

are a) Instant Messaging, b) Email, c) NetMeeting™, d) Telephone/Teleconferencing, e)

Software project management system, f) Shared electronic repository, g) Software Problems

Reporting Application and h) Face to face communication. As shown in table 1, we found 44



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types of ICT/FTF combinations utilized by the respondents in our study. We further used cluster

analysis to extract meaningful groupings of ICT affordances from these 44 ICTs combinations

(refer to Section 4.2.1 for details).

--- Insert Table 1 about here ---

4. Data Analysis and Results

4.1 Factor Analysis

Prior to analyzing the data, principal component factor analysis with promax rotation was

used to test the validity of the three levels of communication problems. The promax rotation was

used because the three levels of communications problems were correlated conceptually. With an

oblique rotation, such as a promax rotation, the factors are permitted to be correlated with one

another (Hair, Anderson, Tatham and Black 1998). As shown in table 2, three factors emerged

with eigenvalues greater than 1.00 explaining a total of 81.68 percent of the variance. All the

items loaded above 0.6 on the appropriate factor and there were no cross-loadings. The reliability

constructs were assessed using Cronbach‟s Alpha. As shown in table 2, the results exhibited

acceptable alpha values ranging from 0.84 to 0.95.


4.2 Statistical Analyses

Statistical analyses were conducted in two steps. In the first step, a cluster analysis was

first conducted to identify subgroups of ICT combinations into meaningful groupings of

affordances offered by the ICT/FTF combinations. In the second step, loglinear analysis was

used to explore the relationship between the affordances of ICTs and perceived communication

failures (i.e. low, moderate and high).



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4.2.1 Cluster Analysis

A cluster analysis was conducted to identify subgroups of ICT combinations within the

sample so that we can classify the 44 types of ICT/FTF combinations in the data into meaningful

groupings of affordances offered by these ICT/FTF combinations. Cluster analysis has been used

in several past studies to explain ICT usage patterns (e.g. Marginson, King and Mcaulay 2000).

The 8 variables selected for the clustering are all the ICT and the FTF usage variables. Everitt

(1993) suggested transforming clustering variables into binary so as to obtain unbiased cluster

results. Since these variables were binary in our dataset, no transformation was required in this

study. One of the major problems with cluster analysis is the determination of the most

appropriate number of clusters (Everitt 1979). To overcome this problem, we use the approach

suggested by Milligan (1980) to combine both hierarchical and nonhierarchical cluster analysis.

First, we employed SPSS hierarchical cluster analysis using Ward‟s method to generate a

“dendogram” plot diagram. This diagram describes the contents of the clusters existing at each

stage of the merging process. The inspection of the plot allows us to determine empirically the

level at which the clustering should take place which helps us to visually determine the number

of clusters for the sample (Hair et al. 1998). Then, using the number of clusters determined from

the hierarchical cluster analysis, we conducted a K-means cluster analysis in SPSS which is a

nonhierarchical method.

Before the results of the cluster analysis were interpreted, we validated the results using a

series of one-way ANOVA and chi-square tests (Marginson et al. 2000). Specifically, the

variables: perceived communication failures at level A, B and C were assessed using one-way

ANOVA while the rest of the binary variables were assessed using chi-square tests (Daniel 1990).



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Both the ANOVA and chi-square tests whether values of variables used to form clusters and

other non-clustering variables are statistically significantly different between the clusters found

(Hambrick 1983; Hair et al. 1998). All the statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS.

The cluster analysis results indicate that communication events form four distinct groups.

Communication events in cluster A is characterized by affording textual communication while

communication events in cluster B is characterized by relying affording audio communication.

As for cluster C, we found that communication events in cluster C are characterized by affording

a combination of audio and textual communication. Lastly, communication events in cluster D

are found to rely on mainly FTF communication. Hence, the four groups identified from the

cluster analysis were named as textual (cluster A), audio (cluster B), audio and textual (cluster

C), and FTF (cluster D). Figures 1 to 4 show the different combinations of ICTs in each cluster.

--- Insert Figures 1 to 4 about here ---

To assess the interpretability of the cluster analysis results, we calculated the cluster

means and standard deviations for each classification variable as shown in tables 3 and 4. The

main concern here is whether the cluster can be meaningfully interpreted and differentiated from

one another. Given the scaling of the ICT/FTF variables, the means indicate the percentage of

communication events that utilize FTF or that particular ICT for communication. The four-

cluster solution validated using one-way ANOVA shows significant different across the clusters

was reported in table 3 and table 4 reported the chi-square tests results. The results indicate that

the risks perceived for the three levels of communication problems are significantly different

across the four clusters: Level A (F=23.26, p<0.01), Level B (F=25.53, p<0.01), Level C

(F=28.61, p<0.01). In addition, the usages of all other ICTs vary significantly different across the

4 clusters (χ2 values range from 27.88 to 139.95).



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--- Insert Tables 3 and 4 about here ---

4.2.2 Loglinear Analysis

Loglinear analysis using backward elimination method was further conducted to explore

the relationship between the affordances of ICTs and the degree of perceived communication

failures (i.e. low, moderate and high). The goal in loglinear modeling is to the find the most

parsimonious non-saturated model that can explain the pattern of observed cell frequencies. Our

loglinear model in this study contained the following 2-way interaction effects: affordances of

ICT combinations * perceived communication failures. The results loglinear analysis are shown

in table 5. This is a non-saturated model with L.R 2 (df=9, N=445) = p=0.285; Non-significant

since p>0.05 indicating that the final model is not significantly worse that the next complex

model. Our objective here is to find the most parsimonious non-saturated model that can explain

the pattern of observed cell frequencies. Our results indicate acceptable fit between observed

frequencies and expected frequencies and show that the interaction effect between affordance of

ICT and perceived communication failures is significant (LR 2 (9, 445) = 103.83, p =0.000,

significant at p<0.05). This indicates that the association between affordances of ICTs and

perceived communication failures is significant. Our loglinear results reveal that low perceived

communication failures tend to be more associated with cluster D. High perceived

communication failures tend to be more associated with cluster C. Moderate perceived

communication failures has almost similar association with cluster A, cluster B and cluster D.

The relationship between perceived communication failures and the four clusters are summarized

in table 6.





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5. Discussion

This section discusses the findings to our specific research questions posed earlier:

a. Which ICT affordances will be useful to manage high perceived communication

failures?

b. Which ICT affordances will be useful to manage moderate perceived communication

failures?

c. Which ICT affordances will be useful to manage low perceived communication

failures?

The primary finding from our data is that perceived communication failures can be

managed using affordances of ICTs. Specifically, we found that communication with low

perceived communication failures tend to favor the affordances provided by FTF communication

while high perceived communication failures tend to prefer the affordances provided by the

combination of email and telephone/teleconferencing.

5.1 High Perceived Communication Failures

We found that affordances from ICT combinations in cluster C were used to manage high

perceived communication failures. Specifically, the combined affordances (i.e. textual and audio)

from the combination of email and telephone/teleconferencing were helpful to manage high

perceived communication failures. This also suggests that the combined affordances from these

ICTs were useful to enhance communicators‟ competence and ability to manage high perceived

communication failures. Specifically, an email to provide detailed information and a followed-

up phone call to inform the recipient to check for email would aid in ensuring the required

information is received and understood by receivers. Hence, the textual affordance of email



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serves as the communication context provider providing detailed contextual background

information and the audio affordance telephone/teleconferencing operates as feedback

immediacy allowing communicators to clarify and discuss the contextual information transmitted.

Interestingly, we observed that IM is often included as part of the combination of ICT in cluster

C as it provides additional affordances in helping communicators to enhance their

communicators communication competency and ability. Specifically, we found that respondents

in our study often used IM to establish the contact to ensure that the recipient(s) was around

before they would initiate any telephone/teleconferencing session. In such cases, IM affords both

presence availability and absent availability information as it allows the sender to see via a

“buddy list” on the availability of the receiver and then provide a quick notification to ensure that

the receiver is around for the telephone/teleconferencing session. Such availability information

encourages unplanned conversation (Sarbaugh-Thompson and Feldman 1998) and is not

afforded by either email or telephone/teleconferencing. Specifically, the failure of the telephone

to provide such availability information is the primary reason that 60% of business phone calls

fail to reach their intended recipient (Rice and Shook 1990). Furthermore, since IM is perceived

to be less intrusive than the telephone call (Handel and Herbsleb 2002), it is an effective mean to

get quick real time responses to questions or seek clarifications (Garrett and Danziger 2007).

IM‟s ability to provide quick responses is useful to communicators that require feedback

immediacy and availability information during communication with high perceived

communication failures.

5.2 Moderate Perceived Communication Failures

We found that the affordances of ICT combinations in cluster A, cluster B and cluster D

can be used to manage moderate perceived communication failures. Specifically, we found the



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textual affordance from cluster A and audio affordance from cluster B can be useful to enhance

communicators communication competency and ability during moderate perceived

communication failures. Specifically, respondents in our study were able to use email effectively

in many situations even though it supports mostly textual communication. This is surprising

since past studies seem to indicate that affordances offered by email are usually more suitable for

non complex task and not so effective for information sharing (Bell and Kozlowski 2002, Geber

1995). In contrast, our study found that email affords a variety of valuable resources that were

effective to manage many potential communication failures. Specifically, the persistence of

email is an important resource to manage communication situations with high and moderate

perceived and communication failures. We found that the respondents in our study tend to use

email during moderate or high perceived communication failures situation to document the

communication. This aspect of using email is consistent with Markus (1994)‟s finding that

people would put even simple requests in email just for the sole purpose of documentation.

Second, we found that respondents in our study were able to use email to share extensive critical

information effectively or to refer to complex objects during communication by attaching

documents in email. Specifically, the email technology allows multimedia documents to be

attached indicating that pictures, images, audio, video and animations can be integrated into the

electronic text of email. Hence, we see here that email affords contextual information and

persistence communication which are valuable for enhancing communicators‟ competency.

Past studies have indicated that the telephone/teleconferencing tool offers many resources

(Olson and Olson 2000, Kraut et al. 2002) but in our study we found that one of the most critical

resources afforded is accessibility. The accessibility of the telephone outside office hours (i.e.

home) made it very convenient for respondents to stay connected with their communication



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partners when immediate response was required. Specifically, he or she can take the call anytime

anywhere even when they do not have access to a computer or computer network. Apparently,

telephone or teleconferencing alone was usually not sufficient to manage communication

situations with moderate or high perceived communication failures. Specifically, many

respondents reported that the use of NetMeeting™ during teleconferencing session to be an

effective mean to display objects of discussion visually to enhance the understanding of the non-

collocated communication partners. Alternatively, we found that it is common to communicate

urgently via telephone and then follow up with email to ensure the entire message is being

received. Hence, this suggests that affordances that are able to provide information about the

shared objects are important to communicators with moderate perceived communication failures.

This critical finding on providing information of shared objects is important to developers of new

ICT applications especially those building mobile computing application for communication. It

is likely that the accessibility affordance will be handy to communicators that need to have quick

access to information to perform their job responsibilities when they are not at their desk.

5.3 Low Perceived Communication Failures

We found that affordances from cluster D can be used to manage low perceived

communication failures. Specifically, our data revealed that FTF communication were often used

during communication with low perceived communication failures. In our study, most of the

complete FTF communication was restricted to recreation or social purposes (e.g. lunch). Since

these social gatherings were just to keep in touch with their collocated team members, the

communication situations were generally of low or no perceived communication failures. This is

consistent with some of the recent findings that suggest that FTF communication can be

expensive, low-productivity and are not effective in some work situations (Nardi and Whittaker



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2002). This finding has serious implication in the workplace that still rely on predominately on

FTF communication. Another reason why FTF communication was seldom utilized in situations

with high perceived communication failures was due to the fact that it did not provide the

resource to archive the conversational content for future reference. In other words, FTF

communication does not afford persistence communication which is especially critical in

software development work setting because problems and issues usually need to be documented,

reviewed and referenced by team members or team leaders later. During situations with low

perceived communication failures (typically socialization activities) it is likely that

communicators will be more concerned with communication efficiency as they do not feel the

need to utilize additional affordances to enhance their communication competency and ability.

Hence, FTF communication affords socialization which provides opportunity for communicators

to share and exchange knowledge which may ultimately help to enhance their competence and

ability.

5.4 Concept of core and tangential affordances

An important finding from our study is that the affordances offered from the forty-four

types of ICT combinations can be subdivided into core and tangential (i.e. secondary)

affordances. The concept of core and tangential affordances of ICT is drawn from the discussion

of core and tangential features of a technology (Griffith and Northcraft 1994; Griffith 1999). A

technology is composed of core and tangential features where core features are critical to the

overall identity of the technology while tangential features are the optional features (i.e. good-to-

have) of the technology. Applying this concept to our discussion here, the core affordances are

valuable and important resources that are critical to the communicators during communication.

In contrast, tangential affordances provide resources that are perceived as optional but important.



22

Our finding suggests that organization communicators‟ usage of ICTs are influenced by how the

combined affordances (both core and tangential) are used to enhance communicators‟

competence and ability during communication.

Very interestingly, we observed that the core affordances are the affordances that are

created deliberately by the designer of the technology. This is consistent with Norman‟s (1990)

viewpoint of affordances as the “expected usages” of the technology. For instance, our 4-cluster

results clearly indicate the core affordance (i.e. textual, audio, textual and audio and FTF)

provided by each cluster. However, a closer examination of the affordances in each of the cluster

reveal that there are secondary (i.e. tangential) affordance(s) such as accessibility, persistence,

and availability that are equally critical in enhancing communicators‟ communication

competence to prevent potential communication failures. Specifically, these tangential

affordances may not be designed intentionally for communicators but rather the tangential

affordances are perceivable by the communicators. In other words, the usefulness of tangential

affordances depends on communicators‟ perception of the situation and how these affordances

may have effects on their actions. The literature referred to this as “perceptible affordances”

(Van Vugt, Hoorn, Konijn and Dimitriadou 2006, Gibson 1979, Gaver 1991). Even though, the

concept of perceptible affordances have not been widely examined and understood in past

studies on ICT use, our findings indicate that the tangential affordances and core affordances

play equally important roles in helping communicators to manage perceived communication

failures. More importantly our study shows that affordances designed intentionally by the

designer of the technology as well as perceptible affordances that are not created deliberately by

the designer are useful to manage perceived communication failures. We summarize the core and

tangential affordances of ICTs afforded by each cluster in Table 6.



23

6. Contributions, Limitations and Future Research

6.1 Contributions

This study makes important contributions to research. First, a major contribution of the

study is to provide a better understanding between the underlying affordances of ICTs and

communicators‟ perception of the communication process. Specifically, there is a distinct lack of

research with affordance-based focus as past studies on ICT-supported communication tend to

focus on the technology per se or treat technologies as independent variables (Whittaker 2003).

Second, this study focuses on the easily available and ubiquitous ICTs in a workplace rather than

making comparison between ICTs allows us to investigate the relative influences of the

affordance from traditional ICT versus newer ICT. As such, it enhances our understanding of

how the different ICTs co-exist in the workplace and which affordances are core or tangential.

The research also makes important contributions to practice. First, with the wide variety

of ICTs available in an organizational workplace, we believe that understanding the critical

affordances of commonly available ICTs will help us better understand the usage of ICTs in

organizations. Second, understanding the relationship between affordances of ICT and perceived

communication failures help to enlighten developers of new ICTs on the types of affordances

that will enhance the communication competence of organization communicators. Specifically,

our finding in terms of the core, tangential and perceptible affordances provide important design

considerations for developing the evolutionary unified communication technologies (Evans 2004,

Harper 2003).

6.2 Limitations and Future Research



24

The findings and limitations of this study suggest directions for future research. First, this

study most likely did not include all relevant or important contextual constructs that are likely to

influence individual‟s perceptions. It seems possible that certain environmental or contextual

factors (i.e. content of communication or communication size) are likely to influence the

perceived communication failures. Hence, examination of environmental and contextual factors

is going to be a significant and relevant topic that warrants future research. Second, our findings

indicate that affordances of ICT can be examined from the perspective of core affordance versus

tangential affordances and perceptible versus deliberately-designed affordances. Further research

along these two dimensions of ICT affordances and their impacts on communication outcomes

and communication competence is definitely one promising avenue of research. Third, a

disadvantage of loglinear models is the inability of the techniques to explain the magnitude

(strength of association), nature (linear or non-linear), and direction (positive or negative) of the

significant association between two categorical variables. We conducted loglinear analysis as an

initial first step to explore and understand the relationship between perceived communication

failures and ICT affordances. Future study may need to use other statistical techniques to explain

the magnitude, nature and direction of the significant association between affordances of ICTs

and perceived communication failures.

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29

Figures & Tables

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

EM EM +

SR

EM +

PRA

EM +

IM

EM +

CALL +

SR

EM +

CALL +

SR +

PRA

EM +

SR +

PRA

SPMS +

SR +

PRA

Perc

en

tag

e

EM: Email, Call: Telephone/Teleconferencing, IM: Instant Messaging, NET: NetMeeting™,

PRA: Problems Reporting Application, SPMS: Software Project Management System, SR: Shared Repository

Figure 1. ICT Combinations in Cluster A (N=97)



30

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

CALL CALL

+ NET

CALL

+ SR

CALL

+ EM

+ PRA

CALL

+ IM

CALL

+ PRA

CALL

+ IM +

PRA

IM CALL

+ NET

+ PRA

CALL

+ NET

+ SR

CALL

+ EM

+ NET

+ PRA

Perc

en

tag

e

EM: Email, Call: Telephone/Teleconferencing, IM: Instant Messaging, NET: NetMeeting™, PRA: Problems Reporting Application, SPMS: Software Project Management System, SR: Shared Repository

Figure 2. ICT Combinations in Cluster B (N=99)



31

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

EM +

CALL

EM +

CALL +

IM +

NET

EM +

CALL +

IM

EM +

CALL +

IM +

NET +

SPMS

EM +

CALL +

NET

EM + IM

+ SPMS

EM +

CALL +

IM +

NET +

PRA

EM +

CALL +

IM +

SPMS

EM +

CALL +

SPMS +

SR

Pe

rce

nta

ge

EM: Email, Call: Telephone/Teleconferencing, IM: Instant Messaging, NET: NetMeeting™, PRA: Problems

Reporting Application, SPMS: Software Project Management System, SR: Shared Repository

Figure 3. ICT Combinations in Cluster C (N=117)



32

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

FTFFTF + C

ALL + S

R

FTF + CALL + E

M

FTF + CALL + N

ET

FTF + EM

FTF + CALL

FTF + IM

FTF + CALL + E

M + S

R

FTF + EM

+ IM

FTF + SR

FTF + PRA

FTF + CALL + P

RA

FTF + SPM

S + S

R

FTF + CALL + E

M + P

RA

FTF + CALL + N

ET + S

PM

S

FTF + CALL + N

ET + S

R

Perc

enta

ge

EM: Email, Call: Telephone/Teleconferencing, IM: Instant Messaging, NET: NetMeeting™, PRA:

ProblemsReporting Application, SPMS: Software Project Management System, SR: Shared Repository

Figure 4. ICT Combinations in Cluster D (N=132)



33

Combinations with

Single ICT Two ICTs Three ICTs Four or more ICTs

EM EM + SR EM + CALL + SR EM + CALL + SR + PRA

CALL EM + PRA EM + CALL + IM CALL + EM + NET + PRA

IM EM + IM SPMS + SR + PRA EM + CALL + IM + NET

FTF CALL + NET CALL + EM + PRA EM + CALL + IM + NET + SPMS

CALL + SR CALL + IM + PRA EM + CALL + IM + NET + PRA

CALL + IM CALL + NET + PRA EM + CALL + IM + SPMS

CALL + PRA CALL + NET + SR EM + CALL + SPMS + SR

EM + CALL EM + CALL + NET FTF + CALL + EM + SR

FTF + EM EM + IM + SPMS FTF + CALL + EM + PRA

FTF + CALL FTF + CALL + SR FTF + CALL + NET + SPMS

FTF + IM FTF + CALL + EM FTF + CALL + NET + SR

FTF + SR FTF + CALL + NET

FTF + PRA FTF + EM + IM

FTF + CALL + PRA

FTF + SPMS + SR

EM: Email, Call: Telephone/Teleconferencing, IM: Instant Messaging, NET: NetMeeting™, PRA: Problems

Reporting Application, SPMS: Software Project Management System, SR: Shared Repository

Table 1. ICT/FTF Combinations

Component Reliability

1 2 3

Level A Communication Problems 0.91

LA1 0.87 0.06 0.02

LA2 0.97 0.06 -0.07

LA3 0.91 0.19 -0.02

Correlation 1 0.23 0.53

Level B Communication Problems 0.84

LB1 0.35 -0.14 0.68

LB2 0.21 -0.07 0.76

LB3 0.02 0.02 0.84

LB4 -0.03 0.19 0.85

Correlation 0.23 1 0.36

Level C Communication Problems 0.95

LC1 0.05 0.97 -0.05

LC2 0.05 0.90 0.06

LC3 0.02 0.95 0.04

Correlation 0.53 0.36 1

Table 2. Factor Analysis (N=445)



34



35

Overall

Mean

(S.D.)

Cluster A

Mean

(S.D.)

Cluster B

Mean

(S.D.)

Cluster C

Mean

(S.D.)

Cluster D

Mean

(S.D.)

F-values

Communication

Problems

Level A 1.82(0.78) 1.69(0.70) 1.94(0.92) 2.22(0.69) 1.86(0.99) 23.26**

Level B 2.56(1.0) 2.41(0.90) 2.68(0.98) 3.10(0.90) 1.48(0.62) 25.53**

Level C 3.27(1.41) 3.11(1.38) 3.51(1.10) 4.01(1.11) 2.11(0.90) 28.61**

*p<.05; **p<.01; + p<0.10

Table 3. ANOVA Results on the four-cluster solution



36

Overall

Mean

(S.D.)

Cluster A

Mean

(S.D.)

Cluster B

Mean

(S.D.)

Cluster C

Mean

(S.D.)

Cluster D

Mean

(S.D.)

Chi-

square

values

ICT used

IM 0.24(0.43) 0.07(0.26) 0.18(0.39) 0.63(0.48) 0.05(0.21) 119.19**

Email 0.55(0.50) 0.99(0.10) 0.12(0.33) 1.00(0.00) 0.16(0.37) 139.95**

NetMeeting™ 0.18(0.39) 0.00(0.00) 0.17(0.38) 0.48(0.50) 0.07(0.25) 46.27**

Telephone/Teleconferencing 0.58(0.49) 0.07(0.26) 0.97(0.17) 0.97(0.16) 0.32(0.47) 112.04**

Software Project

Management System

0.07(0.25) 0.01(0.10) 0.00(0.00) 0.22(0.42) 0.02(0.12) 41.45**

Shared Electronic

Repository

0.14(0.35) 0.31(0.47) 0.13(0.34) 0.01(0.09) 0.15(0.36) 27.88**

Problems Reporting

Application

0.10(0.31) 0.14(0.35) 0.26(0.44) 0.03(0.16) 0.02(0.15) 31.39**

FTF 0.34(0.48) 0.03(0.17) 0.00(0.00) 0.15(0.35) 1.00(0.00) 197.78**

*p<.05; **p<.01; + p<0.10

Table 4. Chi-square Results on the four-cluster solution



37

Low Perceived

Communication

Failure

N=86

Count (Expected

Count)

Moderate Perceived

Communication

Failure

N=243

Count (Expected

Count)

High Perceived

Communication

Failure

N=116

Count (Expected

Count)

Cluster A

N=97

Affordance= Written

16 (18.7)

63(53.0)

18(25.3)

Cluster B

N=99

Affordance=Audio

9 (19.1)

69(54.1)

21(25.8)

Cluster C

N=117

Affordance=Written+

Audio

5 (22.6)

48(63.9)

64(30.5)

Cluster D

N=132,

Affordance = FTF

56 (25.5)

63(72.1)

13(34.4)

Table 5. Results of Loglinear Analysis: Affordances of ICT combinations *

perceived_communication_failure (i.e. interaction between affordances of ICT and degree

of perceived communication failure)



38

Finding 1 Finding 2

Relationship between Clusters

and Perceived Communication

Failures

Relationship between Clusters and the

concept of Core versus Tangential

Affordances

Cluster A

Moderate Textual Persistence,

Provide context

Cluster B Moderate Audio Feedback immediacy,

Accessibility

Cluster C High Textual and

Audio

Persistence,

Provide context,

Feedback immediacy,

Availability

Cluster D Low/Moderate FTF Socialization

Table 6. Summary of Major Findings

managing perceived communication failures with affordances ... 2012/journal/4 managing... · lee,...

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