Transfer organizational norms through electronic communication

As electronic communication with remote employees gains importance, its effective design to transfer organizational norms becomes a high priority issue for organizations. Because literature on norms and Computer Mediated Communication sheds only partial light on this topic, research is needed to help leverage technology to create shared norms in distributed work teams. The purpose of this dissertation is to find out whether electronic communication can be used to transfer organizational norms and to identify design elements communicating specific norms of cooperation or competition. The first study of existing web sites using interviews demonstrates that informants consider semantic and structural content in forming opinions about organizations and infer cooperation and competition norms from the characteristics of the organization's electronic communication. Based on identified design elements, the second study conducts an experiment to relate semantic design, structural design and communication medium to kind and extent of norm transfer, task performance and satisfaction.; The results confirm that electronic communication affects norms of cooperation and competition and that extent of such norm transfer increases task performance and interpersonal satisfaction. Interestingly, semantic design only affects attitudinal, not behavioral measures of norm transfer, whereas structural design affects both types of measures. Moreover, the structural design impact dominates the semantic design impact when they clash. Finally, both email-based as web-based electronic communication are both equally effective in norm transfer.; These results contribute to the organizational literature in two ways. First, the results indicate that electronic communication from the organization can affect the norms and behaviors of employees. This conclusion complements Adaptive Structuration Theory that focuses on the effects of existing group norms on interpretation and use of electronic communication. By showing the other direction of dual relationship between norms and communication, this dissertation encourages organizations to take an active role in shaping norms and behavior through proper communication. Second, the results give guidelines in terms of semantic and structural design of organizational communication to increase group interaction and cooperation.