Social and Nonsocial Uses of ElectronicMessaging Sy tems in Organizations

This paper examines social and nonsocial uses of electronic messaging systems, their determinants, and their impacts on direction of communication, perceived quality of work, and decision-making. A survey was conducted in 1992 in the headquarters of a large, geographically dispersed telecommunications company in Maryland which used an in-house electronic mail system. The findings showed that electronic messages were not widely used for socioemotional purposes but were certainly more common among certain groups. Messages pertaining to socioemotional content were generally avoided in downward and diagonal communication. Younger employees who had worked for the organiza-tion for a shorter period of time and were holding lower level jobs were more likely to communicate socioemotional content via electronic messages. These people were less often involved in the decision-making process and felt they did not make effective decisions. However, socioemotional use was positively related to perceived quality of work. Consistent with previous studies, upper managers tended to use electronic messages for routine tasks. When time pressure was involved, electronic messages would be used for complex tasks. Studies have shown a considerable amount of socioemotional con-tent in text-based, electronic messages (Hiemstra, 1982; Phillips, 1983; Rice & Love, 1987; Steinfield, 1986a) regardless of their imper-sonal nature claimed by many researchers (Daft & Lengel, 1984