One significant problem that organizations face today is their ability to disseminate information within and across their organizational boundaries efficiently. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how communication media with different characteristics, and individual recipients with different characteristics, influence the performance of the message recipients on tasks that are dependent on the message. Well known communication media theories (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1986) have come under scrutiny for weak empirical support and newer theories have emerged (e.g., Dennis, Fuller, & Valacich, in press) that will require empirical testing to validate. This dissertation represents an initial empirical test of several elements of Media Synchronicity Theory (MST). This dissertation is composed of three essays which describe a series of empirical studies. The studies were carried out (1) to create measurement scales to psychometrically assess individuals' perceptions of media characteristics/capabilities; (2) to experimentally manipulate two media capabilities and evaluate downstream, individual performance relative to a communicated message; and (3) to assess recipient retention of communicated information after a time delay from the experimental manipulations of media capabilities.;The ultimate goal of this research is to provide a rigorous, tightly controlled evaluation of several aspects of MST, and to propose and test two media appropriation factors as an extension to MST. This dissertation is organized in the following manner. The first chapter provides an introduction to the three essays. This introductory chapter will provide a brief theoretical discussion of MST, how MST has evolved over the last decade, and brief introductions to each essay. The second chapter includes the first essay, which will describe the instrument development studies. The third chapter includes the second essay, which will describe the first experimental study. The fourth chapter, containing the third essay, will describe the follow-up experimental study that incorporates a longitudinal aspect into the research model. Finally, the fifth chapter is composed of a summary section that will briefly discuss the dissertation as a whole.
展开▼
