Voice mail and media richness theory-a longitudinal study

Work by R.L. Daft, R.H. Lengel and L. Trevino (1987) in media richness theory (MRT) is being used as a major reference in the study of MRT and the place of the new media within the dimension of MRT. There is a gap in the work of Daft and Lengel: lack of analysis of the scale of equivocality. There is no evidence of the unidimensionality of the scale used to measure equivocality. Consequently there is no certainty in its use as a means of measuring equivocality. This gap can be filled by development of a reliable and uni-dimensional equivocality scale through multidimensional approaches. To demonstrate the use of multidimensional approaches the paper presents a longitudinal case study of the introduction of voice mail in an organisation. The study developed an equivocality scale under the guidance of the work of Daft and Lengel