A47. Rice,
R.E. (1994). Relating electronic mail use and network structure to
R&D
work networks and performance. Journal of Management Information
Systems,
11(1), 9-20.
This study analyzes computer-monitored and self-reported electronic
mail usage and network data collected over time from mentors and their
summer interns at an R&D organization. Amount and network measures
of E-mail usage were significantly associated with work and work
familiarity
networks. As time passed, interns communicated through E-mail more
outside
their formal mentor-intern relations. However amount of E-mail use and
most E-mail network measures (such as centrality) were not related to
mentors’
assessments of interns’ performance several months later. An intriguing
exception was how interns were located in the overall E-mail network.
Surprisingly,
overall, most forms of communication were negatively associated with
performance
ratings. These results imply that it is not necessarily how much one
uses
an e-mail system, but how the users are positioned in that system’s
structural
context, that may affect R&D performance.
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