ELECTRONIC MAIL AS A MEDIUM FOR RICH COMMUNICATION - AN EMPIRICAL-INVESTIGATION USING HERMENEUTIC INTERPRETATION

This study provides an account of how richness Occurs in communication that uses electronic mail. In examining actual e-mail exchanged among managers in a corporation, the study interprets the managerial use of the communication medium of electronic mail as the users themselves u nderstand and experience it. Employing the research approach of interp retivism in general and hermeneutics in particular, the study finds th at richness or leanness is not an inherent property of the electronic- mail medium, but an emergent property of the interaction of the electr onic-mail medium with its organizational context, where the interactio n is described in terms of distanciation, autonomization, social const ruction, appropriation, and enactment. Conclusions and recommendations are that managers who receive e-mail are not passive recipients of da ta, but active producers of meaning; that the best or just an appropri ate communication medium is not determined through an individual manag er's exercise of rational decision making, but emerges as best or appr opriate over time, over the course of the medium's interactions with m any users, that systems professionals need to treat the managerial use r of an e-mail system not merely as a client of information services, but also as a processor or co-processor to be integrated into the syst em design; and that information systems researchers need to dedicate a ttention to the actual processes by which the users of a communication medium come to understand themselves, their own use of the medium, an d their organizational context.