Email and organisational memory

1. Email and organisational memory Steven D. Brown Loughborough University Geoffrey Lightfoot Keele University

2. Sproull & Keisler, 1995

3. E-Mail Formflow Workflow Info Retrieval Document Manager Document Imaging Groupware Document & Form Based Communication High Volume Data Communication Group Calendars Group Authoring Organisation Communication Electronic Meetings Video Conference Organisational Memory

4. Groupware: Computer mediated meetings and the mediation of memory • Study of two organisations at different stages in the adoption of groupware technologies • Publisher of adverts newspaper, moving towards online commerce • Major contractor to oil industry • Qualitative methodology

5. E-mail as ‘informing’ activities Requests: ‘whether or not something has been completed’ ‘can you get feedback on this?’ Instructions: ‘this is how we are going to go about it, this is what you need to look out for, try it this way if it doesn’t work’ Being in the loop: ‘you can be up to date with what is going on all the time in every centre’

6. E-mail as ‘relating’ activities ‘sometimes I can be crackling off for half an hour and you have not necessarily achieved anything concrete, but what you are achieving especially when you are new to a team is forging a relationship with those people so they can determine what you expect and vice versa’

7. Email creates problems in communication • ‘what I am trying to say is that people say • things in email that they would not say across a desk • or maybe the phone to people. They will either come • on a bit strong or formally and it can be misinterpreted’ • (OilSite, Manager Executive Development)

8. Political use of email or ‘ass covering’Example: Dropping bombs • ‘And I think that possibly it is also a way of letting • something go as a bit of a bombshell and the following • morning someone comes in and logs in and they have • logged in overnight or before they left or something’ • (OilSite, Manager Project Definition)

9. Copying-in superiors and others(e.g. CC, BCC, Forwarding) • 'If someone in the reporting line or one of my guys has • got a dialogue going he will copy me with it. Some of • that is appropriate, there is an issue or a dispute or • something to resolve that might not know about and I • will just read it and see that it has been completed. • You do get the opportunity to stick your oar in. I do • get copied a lot of stuff, but I just don't need it’ • (OilSite, Manager Executive Development)

10. Prolonging the debate • 'you get the thing where they are trying to insert • comments on text that has already been written and of • course they are using different colours and then someone • has gone in and used capitals and the whole thing then • becomes a bit of shambles. Then someone prints it out • and you have no clue what the history is and what has • been going on in this message and that does happen' • (OilSite, Manager Project Definition)

11. Doctoring messages Oilsite: Personnel Manager - floor plans request to maintenance goes missing ReadyAds: Site Managing Director - argument over a new server is ‘edited’

12. Provoking accounts ‘When it can, not necessarily my staff, but this potential public flogging that’s going on or your ‘should we have done this?’ or ‘why didn’t we do this?’. Its usually ‘well we missed the boat haven’t we?’ and you know who it is aimed at.’

13. Stopping debate / severing alliances ‘Lets call a meeting about this’ ‘Phone me now’ ‘Thanks for your input’

14. Storing emails ‘I am the worst I am afraid I am probably the last person you should ask because I am probably the most hated in IT because my email, my email erm file is bigger than probably the rest of the company [Laughter] I get regularly nice messages from [IT manager] saying can you please take your file to less than ten gigabytes [laughter] I will show you I mean, if I show you my email trees erm there is my basic list of email folders (laughter) okay, and then I can show you each element just for the purpose of the tape recorder Geoffrey is now looking at a tree which is about shall we say you can see (laughter) we are looking at a tree of emails of maybe fifty folders deep’

15. Re-circulating obligations Have you ever had occasion to hold people to their email? 'Well yes, what I quite often do is having done that, then using a different colour or perhaps in a progress tracking, I will then issue it for next week, saying complete, complete, complete and then say that this has not been done, get on with this as quickly as possible and that sort of thing' (OilSite, Manager Engineering Computation)

16. Informality of senior meetings • 'It is informal but it is basically four operations managers. • But we never record minutes. Absolutely unnecessary. • People will record the actions and discussions in their • own little workbooks. You know you are basically • colleagues together' • (OilSite, Manager Executive Development)

17. Problem: How to make decisions in the context of vastly improved org memory Solution: Dispose of emails into ad-hoc archives so they permanently available Unintended Result: Managers dragged back into email disputes Result: Free up a space outside of audit where decisions can occur

18. Summary • Users experience email as a highly formal space of communication • Copying-in and prolonging debate used extensively for political purposes • Formalisation of previously informal communication contrast with informalisation of previously formal communication at very senior levels

19. Potential Solutions • Very senior figures deliberately disconnect from electronic communication • Colleagues are enrolled as informal archivists • Formulate policy or disable ‘CC’ and ‘BCC’ features • Greater use of moderators in electronic communication • Negotiate in advance the status of emails as formal business records