Organizational Roles and Communication Modes in Team Work

We have surveyed ten collaborators’ perceptions on the value of nine communication modes: email, telephone, pen-and-paper, computer conferencing, telephone conferencing, face-to-face, fax, post, and whiteboard. Eight roles were considered: innovator, resource investigator, chair, shaper, evaluator, team worker, organizer, and finisher. Through a repeated measures design, a mapping between these modes and roles was determined. Face-to-face communication was viewed as most valuable by all roles, except the innovator role. Voice-based communication modes supported more interdependencies among roles than any other communication mode, but each mode serves a function in supporting group work.