On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Christopher Lueg wrote:
The paper that I had in mind references works that say the above but presents different findings:
"Contrary to prior research, we found that the primary use of workplace IM was for complex work discussions. Only 28% of conversations were simple, single-purpose interactions and only 31% were about scheduling or coordination. Moreover, people rarely switched from IM to another medium when the conversation got complex."
from:
The character, functions, and styles of instant messaging in the workplace E Isaacs, A Walendowski, S Whittaker, DJ Schiano, C Kamm Proc 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/587078.587081
BW: Yes, this fits with the work that Anabel Quan-Haase and I did some years ago. Longest version is in Anabel's diss. Published version is: Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. "Hyperconnected Net Work: Computer-Mediated Community in a High-Tech Organization." Pp. 281-333 in The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy, edited by Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006 which is also available on my website. We also were aware of the staying with the same medium norm. I semi-humourously called it "Wellman's Law of the Conservation of Media". However, when people in the organization thought that things had gotten too complex for IM, they moved to in-person meetings.