Does E-Mail Make White Collar Workers More Productive?

We report on a four-year investigation of how information flows affect white-collar productivity. For this research, we developed software to track all e-mail activity within a midsize executive recruiting firm. We also negotiated access to three separate data sets including: (1) project level accounting measures of revenues, (2) surveys of individual perceptions of information technology and information sharing, and (3) direct observation of e-mail activity over a period of six months. We found statistically significant relationships between the structure of a recruiter’s internal e-mail network and success at both landing and executing contracts. In addition to traditional social network analysis techniques, we also considered dynamic measures of e-mail behaviors and flows. Sending smaller e-mails was associated with better performance in both landing and executing contracts, while receiving prompter responses from colleagues was associated with success in executing, but not landing contracts. These results provide some of the first statistical evidence that information flows and use of information technology affect individual productivity at the desktop level. They also demonstrate how measures of information behaviors and flows can complement traditional techniques of social network analysis to provide richer models of the effects of information management practices on individual and organizational performance. Contact: Nathaniel Bulkley School of Information University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Tel: (734) 330-9467 E-mail: [email protected]