Decisional style, mood and work communication: email diaries

Abstract

To understand the use of technology to support interpersonal interaction, a theory of decisional style was applied to email use within the workplace. Previous research has used self-report and rating scales to address employee email behaviours, but this falls short of management's capability to monitor the actual behaviour. Thirty-nine employed individuals completed a five‐day communication diary recording their actual behaviour upon receiving personal and work-related emails as well as the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales. It was found that vigilant individuals were more likely to use email in an efficient manner by deleting personal email and being less likely to open email later. Procrastinators, buckpassers and people experiencing high levels of negative affect were all more likely to delay dealing with email, which could be viewed as dealing with email in a less efficient manner.

Statement of Relevance: This work offers insights as to how people receive and process emails and is thus relevant to the development and implementation of collaborative technologies. Whilst other studies use individual's self-reports, this study uses a more accurate communication diary. Decisional style can predict the monitoring and response to electronic communication.

Keywords:

• operator workload
• decision making
• organisational communication
• distributed cooperative work
• human–computer interaction

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Professor Leon Mann of the University of Melbourne for his generous advice and the use of his questionnaire and the moderators of the Whirlpool and VWWatercooled internet forums for allowing us to recruit participants on these sites.