Working relationships: assessing the need for media to support close personal relationships at work

Some prior media research has questioned the ability of electronic media to support relationships. This could be a serious impediment to distributed work. However other research indicates that we have few close personal relationships in our life outside work. This study describes a series of questionnaires in which we extended research on relational depth to work. We find, as expected, that few working relationships are closely personal. Thus, even if media are inadequate in their ability to support close relationships, this may not be a serious concern in real organizations. We view this study, as a small step in a long term program to study work relationships and media