CMC Influence on Voluntarily Collaborating Knowledge Workers' Perception of Equivocal Tasks

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a crucial coordination option for knowledge workers who rotate at their discretion across locations and projects. Through field-based research, we find that this discretion may encompass even the act of communication. As incoming information from knowledge worker colleagues overwhelms the recipients, conciseness and brevity communication norms arise to signal sender competency and reduce the receivers’ efforts to review and respond, thereby encouraging the receiver’s participation. These meticulous communication norms result in highly structured exchanges, biasing the workers’ shared meaning of the task nature from equivocal to routine. Contributions to theory include theory-building regarding the use of CMC in a specific but increasingly prevalent innovative knowledge work context. Practical implications include that those knowledge workers who adopt effective face-to-face communication norms to complement these CMC norms will achieve greater innovative success.