In the age of the smart machine: the future of work and power
In the age of the smart machine: the future of work and power
Technological frames: making sense of information technology in organizations
ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) - Special issue on social science perspectives on IS
Email overload: exploring personal information management of email
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Email—the good, the bad, and the ugly
Communications of the ACM
Keystroke level analysis of email message organization
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Distance, dependencies, and delay in a global collaboration
CSCW '00 Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Distributed Work
Taking email to task: the design and evaluation of a task management centered email tool
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
The challenge of absent presence
Perpetual contact
Formulation and preliminary test of an empirical theory of coordination in software engineering
Proceedings of the 9th European software engineering conference held jointly with 11th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering
Out of Sight, Out of Sync: Understanding Conflict in Distributed Teams
Organization Science
"Constant, constant, multi-tasking craziness": managing multiple working spheres
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
No task left behind?: examining the nature of fragmented work
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Understanding email use: predicting action on a message
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Email overload at work: an analysis of factors associated with email strain
CSCW '06 Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Decisional style and self-reported Email use in the workplace
Computers in Human Behavior
Managing currents of work: multi-tasking among multiple collaborations
ECSCW'05 Proceedings of the ninth conference on European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Materiality and change: Challenges to building better theory about technology and organizing
Information and Organization
Quality versus quantity: e-mail-centric task management and its relation with overload
Human-Computer Interaction
Reducing the effect of email interruptions on employees
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
Social transparency in networked information exchange: a theoretical framework
Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
"A pace not dictated by electrons": an empirical study of work without email
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
EmailValet: managing email overload through private, accountable crowdsourcing
Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Stories of the Smartphone in everyday discourse: conflict, tension & instability
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Email inbox management by information overloaded users
Proceedings of the companion publication of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
How to manage your inbox: is a once a day strategy best?
BCS-HCI '13 Proceedings of the 27th International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference
Hi-index | 0.01 |
The increasing volume of e-mail and other technologically enabled communications are widely regarded as a growing source of stress in people's lives. Yet research also suggests that new media afford people additional flexibility and control by enabling them to communicate from anywhere at any time. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, this paper builds theory that unravels this apparent contradiction. As the literature would predict, we found that the more time people spent handling e-mail, the greater was their sense of being overloaded, and the more e-mail they processed, the greater their perceived ability to cope. Contrary to assumptions of prior studies, we found no evidence that time spent working mediates e-mail-related overload. Instead, e-mail's material properties entwined with social norms and interpretations in a way that led informants to single out e-mail as a cultural symbol of the overload they experience in their lives. Moreover, by serving as a symbol, e-mail distracted people from recognizing other sources of overload in their work lives. Our study deepens our understanding of the impact of communication technologies on people's lives and helps untangle those technologies' seemingly contradictory influences.