Email communication in project management: A bane or a blessing?

South African Journal of Information Management

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Email communication in project management: A bane or a blessing?
 
Creator Smit, Marius C. Bond-Barnard, Taryn J. Steyn, Herman Fabris-Rotelli, Inger
 
Subject engineering; project management; project communication management email; communication; project management
Description Background: Project success used to be measured solely in terms of efficiency metrics such as scope, cost and time; however, there are proposals that more attention should be paid to process-related performance factors such as communication. The advent of email has significantly impacted the way the world communicates.Objectives: This study investigates the preference of email communication relative to other communication mediums in project environments and the effect of email communication on feelings of stress and overload in the workplace.Method: A survey with 430 responses was conducted to determine the communication preferences of project practitioners in a typical project. The average rank and frequency response methods were used to analyse the data.Results: The findings indicate that the communication preferences of project practitioners still support the media richness theory and that face-to-face communication is the preferred communication medium in most situations. Despite email being disruptive and a cause of stress, the respondents did not indicate being overloaded because of email.Conclusion: Even though there has been a dramatic shift towards email and electronic communication in projects, face-to-face communication is still the most preferred communication type for most situations. Furthermore, email is perceived as an effective tool to delegate, can be used to build and develop relationships and trust, and is an efficient and effective tool that contributes to project communication success.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor None
Date 2017-08-11
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Quantitative study; Survey
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajim.v19i1.826
 
Source SA Journal of Information Management; Vol 19, No 1 (2017); 10 pages 1560-683X 2078-1865
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/826/1141 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/826/1140 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/826/1142 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/826/1135
 
Coverage South Africa — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2017 Marius C. Smit, Taryn J. Bond-Barnard, Herman Steyn, Inger Fabris-Rotelli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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