Exploring the Relationship Between Communication Risk Perception and Communication Portfolio

With the rapid development of information communication technologies (ICT) over the past decade, the nature of how organization members communicate has changed, becoming far more complex and challenging. Communication risks brought about by technology-mediated communication can sometimes be detrimental to the overall organizational function and success. We classify these communication risks into three types: reception, understanding, and action risks. We propose the notion of communication portfolio which refers to a single ICT or a specific combination of lCTs that can be used to manage any perceived risk of communication. Specifically, this study aims to examine the relationship between perceived risks (i.e., risk of reception, risk of understanding, and risk of action) in the communication process and the dimensions (i.e., content, and structuring mechanism) of the communication portfolio used for communication. We also identify communication risk factors that may accentuate the different types of risks. We develop a communication risk perception framework to illustrate the relationship between the communication risk factors, the different types of communication risks, and the communication portfolio. Finally, we illustrate how the communication risk perception framework can be applied in a real-life natural setting by using the shuttle Challenger incident, as an example.