Building on Leavitt's Diamond Model of Organizations: The Organizational Interaction Diamond Model and the Impact of Information Technology on Structure, People, and Tasks

This empirical study focuses on the impact of an information technology (IT), specifically electronic mail (e-mail), on three basic organization components: structure, people, and tasks. An Organizational Interaction Diamond (OID) model is developed illustrating how each component enables changes in other components interacting with the organization’s internal and external environments. The organizational setting is the administrative structure of a large, public university. The sample population consists of 390 administrators and professional and clerical support staff. Data were collected via a paper questionnaire with a 54 % return rate. E-mail is used to bridge hierarchical boundaries at the middle and departmental levels, but not at the senior level nor across functional boundaries. E-mail usage enables spanning geographical distances and to coordinate people from dispersed organization units. These new network paths co-exist within the traditional hierarchical structure. Senior level administrators reported using e-mail more often per day than lower level administrators, and used it more for horizontal than for vertical communication. E-mail usage increases for uncertain, simple and routine tasks and decreases for ambiguous, complex and non-routine tasks. The interaction among IT use, job categories, and tasks reveals that the media channel selection varies by job category and task types. The perceived importance of using e-mail is highly associated with the frequency of use of e-mail to provide access to various job categories at different organization levels and for different task types. The importance of this research study and the development of the OID model are to demonstrate that IT efforts are opportunities to capitalize on creating new ways of working by redesigning the tasks, changing the roles of individuals, and spanning organizational boundaries.