Experiences with Electronic and Voice Mail

Organizational computing tools are often developed and managed with an eye toward increasing efficiency. Two of today’s most widespread tools are electronic mail and voice mail. They are often considered similar asynchronous communication systems, one less rich than the other. We report usage results from a single firm which adopted both electronic mail and voice mail at the same time. Survey respondents w’ew the technologies as vital to accomplishing their business, but use them in quite different ways. Electronic mail was utilized to communicate with all personnel equally. In contrast, respondents communicated with their peers using voice mail more than up or down the corporate hierarchy. The technologies were used dtfferently for internal and external communication. Both of these results Jly in the face of Information Richness Theory.