Experiences with electronic and voice mail

Organizational computing tools are often developed and managed with an eye toward increasing efficiency. Two of today´s most widespread tools are electronic mail and voice mail. They are often considered similar asynchronous communication systems, one less rich than the other. We report usage results from a single firm which adopted both electronic mail and voice mail at the same time. Survey respondents view technologies as vital to accomplishing business, but use them in quite different ways. Electronic mail was utilized to communicate with all personnel equally. In contrast, respondents communicated with their peers using voice mail more than they did up or down the corporate hierarchy. The technologies were used differently for internal and external communication. Both of these results fly in the face of information richness theory