The hidden messagesin computer networksSara Kiesler

What many managers regard as merely a tool for storing andtransmitting information has significant and far-reachinglong-term social effects, this author suggests. Becausecomputer networks break down hierarchies and cut acrossorganizational boundaries, people behave differently whenusing them - and once the social context is altered, theorganization changes. The author outlines some of thesesocial effects - both positive and negative - and exhortsmanagers to be both cautious in designing networks andimaginative in harnessing their potential.

Computers were once the exclusive province of scientists andengineers. Today, as they grow more powerful and versatile andless expensive, more people are using them. People usually per-ceive computers as special-purpose tools for calculations and datastorage. But where we have studied them - in companies andeducational organizations - people use them as a general-purposetool to gather and distribute information and to talk with others.

As computers become a shared technology, they influence not onlythe organization of work but also the work itself and enter the

Au'Jmr'^ ,mtp: 1 am very grateful t<, my colleague. Lee S. Sproull. and to James G March ofStanford University lor the ideas they contributed to thif. article. The experiments men-tioned m the article were conducted jointly with Timothy McGuire and Jane Siejiel Ourexperiments and organizational studies have been sponsored by the GMU Robotic.̂ In.sti-luh:. the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health and theSystem Development Corporation.

Sara Ka'sler \~. a pi'ofessor nf social sciencew and soc al psychologyanH ,! nu'ml>er of the Rciboucs Institute at Carnegie-MellonUniversity in Fiitsburgli. This article is reprinted by specialpei-rnisHJon from the January-February 198(i issue of the HarvardBusiness Revivu:. Copynghl ((;) 1986 by the President and Fellowsof liarvard College. All rights reserved.

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domain of management. Accordingly, managers are asking manyquestions about the impact of computers on the workplace:

Tl Does a computer network make managers more effective?

II When introducing computer mail into an organization, do man-agers spend less time in decision making?

^ What kind of computer conference system is best suited to long-distance management?

Tl What are the changes technologies make that people care aboutthe most?

New technology has three orders of effects. The first is the in-tended technical effects - the planned improvements in efficiencythat justify investments in new technology. The second is thetransient effects - the very important organizational adjustmentsmade when a technology is introduced but that eventually dis-appear. The third is the unintended social effects - the permanentchanges in the way social and work activities are organized. Smartexecutives try to make decisions about technology that win on thefirst order, minimize losses on the second, and retain fiexibilityand options on the third.

A tale of two technologies

While the computer is today's most prominent new technology, ithas much in common with past technical innovations, like thetelephone and typewriter, that have had great social impact. Wecan and should learn from the histories of these other innovations.

The elevator is a technology whose intended effect was moreefficient use of energy and space. If it had not been for the elevatorwe could not have built skyscrapers. The elevator also producedsecond-level outcomes - transient effects. When the elevator wasintroduced, people were afraid of stepping into a dangling cage.Eventually, regular elevator inspections, the posting of inspectionforms in elevators and, of course, their ubiquity and good safetyrecord alleviated such fears.

The permanent third effect of elevators came about unintentional-ly and indirectly over a longer period. Tbe elevator made it possi-ble to build structures that increased the numbers of people wholived or worked m proximity but did not know one another. People

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became neighbors in the geographical but not in the personalsense; social contacts became more superficial. And now, as morepeople live and work surrounded by strangers, they feel morealienated and distanced from each other than they did before theadvent of the skyscraper.

When the telephone was introduced, it was supposed to improvebusiness communication. A hundred years ago, the Pittsburghtelephone directory was six pages long and all but six of the 300listings were business numbers. Even the six residential tele-phones were used for business purposes by their owners, who feltthe need to keep in constant touch with their workplaces. Thetelephone did improve business: it made it possible for managers toleave the factory floor, for salespeople to change orders in quickresponse to client demands, for customers to order products direct-ly, and for companies to establish branch offices.

The telephone also had transient effects. Because of party linesand central operators, people using the telephone had no privacy.Another problem was "phonies" who used the telephone's anonym-ity to trick people into fake business deals. Understandably, peoplebecame concerned about whether to trust callers they didn't know.

In the end, though, the social effects of the telephone have beeneven more striking than the technical and transient outcomes.Today people use the telephone more for social and personal pur-poses than for business. In the early part of the century, farms andranches were dismal, lonely and even dangerous places. The tele-phone made it possible for people to sustain friendships and helpeach other quickly and easily. In urban and suburban areas, thetelephone came to be used as a babysitter and, like householdappliances, it increased women's independence. Because it encour-aged sustained interaction outside school, the telephone also madeteenage peer groups socially important.

The workplace has also felt the social effects of the instrument.When it was introduced, many managers imagined they would usethe telephone to enhance their control; they thought that whenthey were physically absent, they could use the telephone as abroadcast device for transmitting orders and information to theiremployees. But the telephone performed even better as a conversa-tion medium than as a broadcast medium. Thus it gave employeesa chance to talk back to their supervisors, to exchange informa-tion, and to send it up the hierarchy as well as receive it. Thetelephone did not militarize the workplace; it democratized it.

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A new management challenge

In recounting this history, I have two general points in mind.First, the social effects of new technologies are hard to foresee.Hence, we tend to exaggerate the technical changes and the signif-icance of transient issues, and we underestimate the social effects.Second, the long-run social effects of a new technology are not theintended ones, but have more to do with the technology's indirectdemands on our time and attention, and with the way it changesour work habits and our interpersonal relations.

In the case of the computer, these technological and social effectshave been particularly noticeable in their impact on communica-tion in organizations. To judge from current research, the effects ofcomputers on communication are a critical new area for managersto understand and exploit.

In organizations we have looked at, computer-mediated com-munication is changing the kind of information people receive anddistribute. For one thing, people use the computer at their owndiscretion as a general-purpose tool for communication. They over-come temporal and geographical barriers to exchange information.But more important, computer-mediated communications canbreak down hierarchical and departmental barriers, standardoperating procedures and organizational norms.

All organizations control communication through structures andnorms. Lightening the information burden on people contributesto organizational efficiency, but separating people from crucialinformation can be a barrier to effectiveness. Obviously, the costsof lacking important information are tbe costs of repairing thedamage caused by that lack. But having too much information canmean costly attention to things tbat don't need it. Because com-puter networks reach so many people so fast, the informationeffects are magnified. Changing the nature of information or itsdistribution in this environment can be very costly. Managers whointroduce computers and computer networks are therefore in aposition to make critical decisions.

Electronic mailThe most widely used computer-mediated communication technol-ogy is computer mail, often called electronic mail. An electronicmail system uses computer text-editing and communications faci-lities to provide a high-speed information exchange service. Any-one with a computer account can use a terminal to compose a

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message or document and send it to any mailbox on that computernetwork or to any other computer linked into that network. Com-municating computers may be in the same building and connectedby a local area network or in different states, countries, or conti-nents and connected by long-distance telecommunications.

A defining characteristic of the technology is its combination oftext, speed, asynchrony and potential audience reach. Computermail is a writing medium, but it is more versatile than papermemoranda and postal mail. People can exchange any text - mes-sages, documents, data files, even computer conferences consistingof the conversations of many people. Computer mail can be trans-mitted instantly, down the hall or across a continent.

Computer mail is sent at the convenience otthe sender and read atthe convenience of the recipient. The frustrations of schedulingtelephone and face-to-face conversations vanish. Supervisors cansend messages to a thousand people as easily as to one person, andautomatically, within seconds, all specified recipients can getcopies. Understandably, computer mail is attractive to organiza-tions.

Three other features of electronic mail are also organizationallyimportant:

II Senders and receivers usually process their own electronic mail;computer messages do not have to go through an intermediarywho processes them.

11 There are no tangible artifacts. Messages are composed on andread from video terminals (rather than teletype machines) withno hard copy left behind. It is possible to store messages oncomputer files and to create hard copies of them, but most mes-sages are never put on paper; and if stored, they are storedelectronically.

i! Senders can transmit tbeir electronic messages in any formatthey choose: a corporate newsletter, an interoffice memo, a bul-letin board notice, or a casual note. And it can be a two-wordgreeting or a two-thousand-word soliloquy.

People who design and sell computer technology assert that,because electronic mail produces more timely and convenientinformation, managers and employees make" better decisions.Everyone understands that information can be irrelevant, misin-

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terpreted, or manipulated. But the first-order effect is presumed tobe the addition of more timely and convenient information.

The hidden effects

Unnoticed by technologists, however, is the third-order effect:computer mail limits the information communicators get aboutthe social context. Consider first the absenee of dynamic personalinformation. Senders have no way to link the content or tone ofmessages to the receivers' responses so as to evaluate how theirmessages are being received. Similarly, without nonverbal tools, asender cannot easily alter the mood of the message, communicate asense of individuality, or exercise dominance or charisma.

When communication lacks dynamic personal information, peoplefocus their attention on the message rather than on each otber.Communicators feel a greater sense of anonymity and detect lessindividuality in others than they do talking on the phone or face-to-face. They feel less empathy, less guilt, less concern over howthey compare with others, and are less influenced by norms.

Consider the absence of static personal information that relates toplace, position and person in computer mail. When a person sendsa computer-mail message, the transmission is instant. Becausethere is no hard copy and little delay between composing themessage and sending it, the sender has little incentive to refiect onthe message. Moreover, the large and easily accessible audience isa social hodgepodge. All computer mail looks pretty much tbesame. The only clue the sender has to tbe receiver's identity andsituation may be his or her name and writing style; all indicationsof the receiver's job title, status, departmental affiliation, gender,race, appearance and demeanor are missing. Missing also is in-formation about the person's background, personality, style andintention.

Similarly, a person receiving a message learns very little aboutthe sender's social position, not even the information that a letter-head or a signature conveys. In addition, an electronic mail mes-sage contains scant information about a situation's norms. Remin-ders of the sender's setting are unavailable. Of course, people maypossess relevant information from otber sources, but the computeritself provides very few cues to evoke that knowledge.

Why is this effect important? When social definitions are weak ornonexistent, communication becomes unregulated. People are less

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bound by convention, less influenced by status, and unconcernedwith making a good appearance. Their behavior becomes moreextreme, impulsive and self-centered. Tbey become, in a sense,freer people.

To some degree all communication technologies weaken the con-trols over information distribution that people have in dealingwith each other face to face. For instance, the telephone not onlyreduces distance constraints, it also eliminates direct access tovisual cues. The telephone, therefore, reduces one's ability to clear-ly define the other person or grasp the situation. Over the tele-phone, though, one gets considerable information about the socialcontext in nonvisual ways - from the secretary who answers orplaces calls, from variations on standard ways of greeting, andespecially from the other person's pauses and tone of voice.

Because computer mail provides neither static nor dynamic cues,users have less social context information than with other com-munication devices, including paper. Paper communication stillreminds people of the social context through such cues as hardcopy, secretaries, letterheads, titles, handwriting variances, andthe sending and receiving routines. True, a standard interofficememorandum does not convey much social information, but inter-office memoranda are typically used as broadcast devices, not asconversation devices. Computer mail is unique because, like thetelephone, it is used for personal interaction but, like the merao, itlacks social context information.

The new communication network advances - automatic file send-mg, electronic mail and distribution lists, computer conferencingand bulletin boards - allow people to do things faster. Executivesnow beginning to deploy these technologies can realize intendedtechnical effects such as cost savings. But if we look beyondefficiency, at behavioral and organizational responses, we'll seewhere the real payoff is likely to be. These technologies overcomecommunication barriers and reduce social context informationmore than any other communication technology. The real payoffs,as well as the social issues, will come from the way the technolo-gies loosen up communication.

The social impact

These technologies will have at least tbree important socialeffects. One effect is adding new information. In some organiza-tions, computers automatically send production statistics, person-

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nel data, or marketing analyses to managers regardless of whetherthey request them. In one large Fortune "500" company that hasused electronic mail for 15 years, administrators receive approx-imately 23 messages per day, most of them from distribution lists.Of those messages, some 60 percent would not have been receivedany other way.

A second social effect is the creation of new groups. The distribu-tion hst is a list of people who will automatically receive messagessent to the "electronic group." At the company just mentioned,there are distribution lists for people located in the same unit, aswell as for people interested in particular technical projects:Chinese cooking, science fiction, or using a new computer. Many ofthese groups are composed of employees who are geographically ororganizationally distant from one another and who have never hador might never have an opportunity to meet. Yet through theseelectronic groups tbey can explore common interests, exchangeinformation and sometimes get to know one another very well.

The third social effect is new forms of soeial interaction. In onecompany, a product developer's message asking for suggestionsabout how to add a feature to a product was sent to distributionlists that reached hundreds of people. Within two weeks, he hadreceived more than 150 messages cutting across geographical,departmental, divisional and hierarchical boundaries. Some of themessages told the manager quite bluntly why it was a bad idea toadd the feature.

Electronic group communication allows supervisors to buildproject groups around a topic, independent of other work they aredoing. At both Digitai Equipment and AT&T, bulletin boards andcomputer conferences form electronic project or decision-makinggroups whose members are chosen with more regard for theirexpertise or relevance to the decision than for their location,organizational unit, or place in the hierarchy. Most of these groupsdeal with routine organizational issues, but some use theelectronic medium because it helps them to respond promptly toserious problems.

Effects of anonymityElectronic group dynamics are unhke the dynamics of face-to-facegroups. In a number of decision-makmg experiments we askedsome managers, both as individuals and as members of a three-person group, to make decisions about some investments. The

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executives made half the decisions face-to-face and half of themusing a computer-mediated communication program that allowspeople to talk simultaneously, each using one "window" on thecomputer screen.

ln one experiment, the choice we gave the groups was one that hasbeen of great interest to decision science researchers: Faced with achoice between a safe investment that is guaranteed to return$20,000 over two years and an investment that has a 50 percentchance of returning $40,000 and a 50 percent chance of returningnothing, which would you choose? Researchers have found thatmost people are risk-averse and choose the safe alternative. Whenasked to weigh one loss against another, however, and to choosebetween a sure bet of losing $20,000 and a chance of losing nothingor $40,000, they are risk-seeking and cboose the latter option.

In our experiment, groups that met face-to-face were risk-aversefor gain choices and risk-seeking for loss choices. Wben the samegroups met using tbe computer, however, they were slightly risk-seekmg no matter what the choice was. In other words, the face-to-face encounters produced conventional decisions whereas thecomputer-mediated discussions produced surprising decisions (atleast they were surprising to us). We have learned tbat much ofthis effect came from risk-taking group members who initiated themove to break precedent. After that, tbe managers using thecomputer to communicate were just as infiuenced by majority ruleas they were in the face-to-face situation. And they were every bitas confident of the decisions they made via computer as they wereabout those they made in person.

In tbat the experiment found unconventional decision making sideby side with strong confidence in decisions, these findings areconsistent with the notion that computer-mediated commu-nication reduces social context information and increases selfcenteredness.

In all our experiments, group members spoke uninhibitedly wbenthey used the computer, engaging in name calling or makingpersonal remarks to others (computer buffs call this "fiaming").Flaming is a third-order effect of computer communication; ithappens because senders and receivers fiame when they areIgnorant of the social context and feel free to express themselves.

Finally, members of computer-mediated groups tend to join inmore readily tban they do in face-to-face encounters. In a typical

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three-person group, one person may talk 45 percent of the timewhile another person may talk only 20 percent of the time.Usually, the person who talks the most is the person who has thehighest social status or the most authority in tbe organization. Itseems that in computer-mediated groups, where there are nosalient reminders of status differences, communication is lessclosely regulated. Increasing the pool of information and miti-gating the effects of status could contribute to organizationalstrength. It may also contribute to organizational instability.

The management issues

What can executives do in managing the introduction of computersystems to assist organizational communication? There are anumber of computer network design issues that managementshould take into account, in particular (ll communication effec-tiveness, (2) managerial discretion and organizational control, (3)organizational social life, and (4l decision-making policy. Let usconsider each of these in turn.

1. Communicatioti effectiveness. How effective is a manager whodictates a memo that a secretary will type, give back fbrcorrections, and send through the interoffice mail, compared witha manager who uses a computer keyboard to type a memo that willbe sent immediately and informally? At a video teleconference atWestinghouse Electric, one person responsible for monitoring theuse of technology in the company told me: "1 can measure howmuch this video teleconferencing equipment costs and guess abouthow much it saves us in travel expenses, but 1 haven't the slightestidea how good the decisions are that our people reacb when theyuse it."

Although we know that effective communication results macceptable outcomes and actions that meet people's goals, we donot have a clear understanding of how to measure the commu-nication's effectiveness.

1 recently talked with some people at AT&T, where a team dealswith the implementation of internal communications. The issue ofhow far it should go in implementing electronic communicationfacilities depends, in part, on whether managers can be expected towork on special projects and committees using the computer and, ifthey can, how to design a computer conference system that willactually enhance the managers' effectiveness. If you just addtechnology to the office, you may wind up having more com-

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munications to monitor, more things to type, and more projectsinitiated that don't get completed; you may not improve per-formance. Because it is so expensive to implement a system andwait to see what happens, smart managers will consider the higherlevel effects.

Consider what you want management to accomplish. One of anexecutive's main jobs is to stand at the intersection of tbeorganization and its environment, sensing external problems thatbis or her group should address. An organization may not adapt tocbange in tbe external environment because the managers areisolated from outside information or because tbe mechanismsfiltering information to them are overly fine. The collectedinformation determines what data managers use in makingchoices and also indicates what issues the organization thinks areimportant. At Sears they regularly collect information onemployee morale and opinion. Inevitably, executives who receivethis information are aware that top management thinks employeemorale is important and are more likely than managers who don'treceive such information to take employees into account whenmaking decisions.

Communicating through computer-mediated networks can helpexecutives span organizational boundaries. These networks gathernew informants as well as genuinely new or previously uncircu-lated information. The question is whether tbe organization needsto be aware of all tbis information. The cost is that more peoplewill spend their effort attending to external forces and coordinat-ing responses to outside interests. The benefit is that the organiza-tion's problem-sensing capacity enlarges.

2. Managerial discretion and organizational control. Tbe moreinformation managers receive, tbe more they need tbewherewithal to respond to that information. Computer-mediatednetworks move information from computer account to computeraccount, but management makes the policy decisions about whohas access to that information and who can act on it. Wiil thesystems allow group communication? Who will have access togroup accounts? Who can create electronic distribution lists orbulletin boards? Who can send computer mail to whom? Howclosely will messages be monitored? And who passes on orresponds to the information contained in these messages?

A light-handed policing policy that provides open access to thesystem will raise managerial initiative and the importance of local

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expertise. It might also require executives to coordinate and con-trol those initiatives and to monitor tbeir applications.

3. Organizational soeial life. How far does management v/ant to gotoward creating electronic communities? In one of our studies,people reported that they receive many work-related messages onthe computer they would not have received any other way.Consequently, they feel dependent on the technology andconnected with the other people on the network.

They also receive a great many messages that have nothing to dowith work. People like to be sociable and will use a technology thatmakes sociability easy. Moreover, as we have seen, computer-mediated communication loosens cultural constraints (for in-stance, against "wasting time") by reducing the reminders a persongets of norms. Eliminating surveillance and social feedback, likelaughter or a frown, reduces any embarrassment over being con-sidered foolish and eliminates a feeling of obligation to respond ina certain way. Hence even busy, shy, or obnoxious people cancommunicate comfortably.

An important issue for managers to consider, then, is the extent towhich the sociability that computer-mediated communicationallows produces feelings of affiliation and commitment to theorganization. By limiting access to the systems for control reasons,therefore, managers migbt also be limiting an important socialbenefit.

4. Decision-making policy. Computer-mediated communicationpermits wide information searches. Because it promotes con-frontation with minority views, it can be a bias buster: forinstance, people from dispersed departments or locations canmobilize to get things changed. In implementing a computernetwork, a company needs to address certain questions. Do wewant to make important decisions on the computer? What kinds ofdecision processes is it simply inappropriate to leave to computermessages? Conventionally, one would think that importantcollective decisions should be made face-to-face. But as in the caseof the six-to-four jury that always votes to acquit, decisions arisingfrom group action can be narrow-minded, inefficient and pre-judicial against minority views.

On the other hand, wben decisions are important - as whenemployees' safety, lives of the public, large investments, or jobs areaffected - one would want decision makers to be sensitive to all the

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social and organizational information available and personify thissensitivity in face-to-face discussion. Executives need to recognizethat computer-mediated communication and information systemscan never replace personal conversations.

The computer as symbol

This contrast between computer-mediated decision making andtraditional decision making brings to light one final issue. Thechoice to use computer-mediated communication to aid anyorganization function may be as infiuenced by the symbolicmeaning computers have for people as by the machines' otherorganizational consequences.

In large part, the positive symbolic meaning of computersdominates their introduction and use in organizations, and thismay be true for some time to come. A group of students, concernedabout their small college's heavy investment in computers, askedthe president, "What about the new student union we need?" Thepresident replied, "With a computer network, the whole campuswill be your student union."

It makes sense to realize that computer technology design,acquisition and implementation in organizations typically affectone another. In one organization, when it became apparent thatthe growing use of computers would increase the organization'slegitimacy and market strength, executives decided to develop anew computer network. The technical network development teammade a detailed plan of what the new one would look like.

It took several people more than a year to develop the plan, whichrequired them to make a series of technical decisions and thinkabout each very deeply. One team member asked a technicalcolleague, "How can I price this system?" The colleague answered,"You can't price workstations, but you can put a cost on deliveringcomputer mail." The team made the decision without anyintervention by management and witbout considering the higher-level effects of pricing communication constraints.

Managers sometimes make decisions in this casual way withoutrealizing that their actions are leading to a technology system thatwill have considerable management import. In making technologydecisions, smart executives are aware of the three orders oftechnology effects and their whole array of organizationalconsequences.

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New computer-mediated communication technologies are on therise and will change the way information is distributed inorganizations. In the computerized organization, more people willhave information that always existed and some people will havenew information. Computer networks will change existing groupsand will create new, electronic groups. People will relate to oneanother in different ways, and the dynamics of decision makingmay change.

The effects can be potentially very interesting to technologydesigners and decision makers, but managers need to think morebroadly. Today we can perform more and more technical miracleswith computers, but real managerial leverage will come fromasking what social miracles we perform with them.

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