Understanding relationships among teleworkers' e-mail usage, e-mail richness perceptions, and e-mail productivity perceptions under a software engineering environment

This study was undertaken to investigate the use of e-mail and its implicat ions under a telework environment for distributed software engineering, For this, the relative strength between a social influence and individual attr ibutes in affecting teleworkers' e-mail use was studied. Management support was used as the representative social influence, and age, status, and ease of use represented individual attributes. An examination was also made on how e-mail use, individual attributes, and management support affected the perceptions of e-mail's information richness and e-mail productivity. Two d ifferent types of surveys, log sheets and perception-based self-reports, as wed as interviews and e-mail correspondences composed the data sources, Th ree hierarchical regression models were defined and tested for the hypothes is validation, Data analysis indicated that management support was a much m ore powerful indicator for teleworkers' media use than individual character istics. Furthermore, although labeled as a relatively lean medium from the media richness theory perspective, e-mail could become an effective and ric her communication tool through an active social construction process of man agement support . Finally, the management support and perception of e-mail as a rich medium were both highly influential in creating teleworkers' posi tive perception on e-mail productivity. This study rendered a strong indica tion that effective adoption of e-mail by teleworkers as an information-ric h medium could benefit distributed work and distributed organizations throu gh enhanced work productivity.