CAN COMMUNICATION MEDIUM LIMITATIONS FOSTER BETTER GROUP OUTCOMES - AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY

Media richness theory has been an influential deterministic theory of communication media adoption and use since its development in the mid- 1980s. However, there has been mounting evidence, particularly in the 1990s, that predictions based on the media richness theory do not alwa ys hold. For example, there has been evidence that a lean communicatio n medium can be the choice of groups engaged in-complex tasks, such as strategic decision making, even when richer media are available. The two main shortcomings of most studies aimed at testing the media richn ess theory have been: (a) an orientation toward controlled settings, w hich hampers the drawing of implications for the usually 'non-controll ed' situations found in organizations in general; and (b) a focus on m edia adoption patterns, which has led to lack of evidence regarding gr oup task outcomes. Here, we go some way towards filling this research gap by providing evidence that non-controlled groups can voluntarily a dopt a communication medium that they perceive as lean. Moreover, we s how that, due to a perception of the limitations imposed by the medium ,,group members can adapt their behavior in order to overcome such lim itations, producing outcomes whose quality is perceived as higher by t hem than in richer media. We studied five process improvement groups i n a New Zealand university. The groups, which redesigned typical unive rsity processes, voluntarily conducted most of their interactions thro ugh an e-mail conferencing system developed by the author. (C) 1998 El sevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.