Communication Media Acceptance in Organizations: An Alternative Research Model

Abstract

This paper describes an alternative approach to examining the role of situational, technological, and physiological factors in electronic media use in organizations. Existing models of media use tend to focus on one dimension of the communication process. Major theories discussed are Social Presence (Short, Williams, and Christie, 1976), Information Richness (Daft and Lengel, 1984; 1986), and Social Information Processing (Fulk, Steinfield, Schmitz, and Power, 1987). The authors” perspective derives from a combination of elements of these theories. In our view, communication media use is affected by interactions of three dimensions of factors: media characteristics, situational demands, and individual and organizational acceptance. The authors” current research is briefly described, with a sample of results which support the hypotheses of multidimensional interactions in acceptability of communication media in organizations.

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