Abstract With the rapid diffusion of the Internet, researchers, policy makers, and users have raised concerns about online privacy, although few studies have integrated aspects of usage with psychological and attitudinal aspects of privacy. This study develops a model involving gender, generalized self‐efficacy, psychological need for privacy, Internet use experience, Internet use fluency, and beliefs in privacy rights as potential influences on online privacy concerns. Survey responses from 413 college students were analyzed by bivariate correlations, hierarchical regression, and structural equation modeling. Regression results showed that beliefs in privacy rights and a psychological need for privacy were the main influences on online privacy concerns. The proposed structural model was not well supported by the data, but a revised model, linking self‐efficacy with psychological need for privacy and indicating indirect influences of Internet experience and fluency on online privacy concerns about privacy through beliefs in privacy rights, was supported by the data.

Abstract One form of knowledge management is the use of measures, to foster learning, to transform individual tacit understanding to shared explicit sensemaking, to evaluate and improve processes and customer service, and even to rationalize and control organizational activities and workers. This article summarizes and applies four theoretical approaches—organizational learning, sensemaking, quality management, and critical theory—to explore how measures are constructed, interpreted, and used within organizational settings as forms of knowledge management. The primary principles, the role of communication, and the role of measures are summarized for each approach. The article ends by discussing some implications of measures in general and this multitheoretic conceptualization of measures in particular for knowledge management.

Research in the information processing, situated learning and social network traditions has consistently demonstrated the importance of social networks for acquiring information. However, we know little about how organizational relationships established by a relative position in a formal structure or social relationships established by interpersonal processes influence who is sought out for various kinds of information. Prior research suggests that people often receive some combination of five benefits when seeking information from other people: (1) solutions; (2) meta-knowledge (pointers to databases or people); (3) problem reformulation; (4) validation of plans or solutions; and (5) legitimation from contact with a respected person. This research builds on that work by assessing the influence of organizational and social structures (such as similarity of job function, hierarchy, task interdependence, physical proximity, influence, trust, friendship and gender) on receipt of these benefits from other people in a physically distributed organization. Task interdependence is the strongest and most consistent predictor of information seeking. However, social relations also affect the receipt of informational benefits, especially as they become more representational and affective. Implications are suggested for the study of social capital, computer-mediated communication and organizational learning.

Computer-mediated communication is the foundation of networking and electronic communities. As the use of new communication technologies continues to proliferate throughout organizations, new modes of interaction between individuals and groups emerge, presenting alternative media choices. How individuals choose between these modes has stimulated much research into theoretical perspectives of media choice within networked and electronic communities. Media Richness Theory is one of these theoretical perspectives. The research presented in this paper investigates the underlying factors of Media Richness Theory, task equivocality and media richness. The results obtained provide evidence to suggest that equivocality may not be unidimensional, and that the richness of media is perceived multidimensionally in terms of the information carrying capacity of media. The findings on dimensionality of equivocality raise doubts as to the basic assumptions of this concept and media richness theory.

Based on Mulkay's and Kuhn's models of change in scientific structure, a scientific communication model of the emergence of a hybrid research area was developed and tested in the field of developmental dyslexia. Data included co-citation data on 74 dyslexia researchers at three points in time, who-to-whom communication network data, survey responses, resumes, association and biographical sources, online reference and citation databases, publications, grant databases, and telephone interviews. Researchers were partitioned into “blocks” of similar scientists on the basis of co-citation and communication relations, compared on selected network-level and individual-level characteristics in order to validate block labels, and situated historically in the politics and advances surrounding the problem area. Results show support for Mulkay's model of branching instead of Kuhn's model of scientific revolution. Evidence points to divergence rather than convergence among the related research areas, but suggests the need for longitudinal follow-up in order to rule out the impact of the inertia of aggregate co-citation data. Implications for theory, methodology, and research are discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Information technology and the need for global information are constantly changing the way securities analysts, one kind of knowledge worker, obtain, manipulate, and disseminate information. This study develops and tests a general model, with specific hypotheses, that individual characteristics and institutional resources influence the information sources and communication channels that individuals use, that use of these sources and channels influences the outcomes of analysts' activities, and that, therefore, individual characteristics and institutional resources both directly and indirectly influence the outcomes. The data for this study were collected through a telephone survey administered to a random sample of 100 securities analysts from 40 of the largest investment banking firms in the United States and the United Kingdom. The results show that individual characteristics have little influence on the information sources and communication channels used by analysts, and thereby do not have a significant influence on the outcomes of analysts' information activities. Institutional resources do have a significant influence on the information sources and communication channels analysts use, but also have a direct influence on outcomes, and thereby play a significant role in analysts' information activities. The conclusion discusses implications of these findings for securities analysts, institutional and retail investors, schools of library and information science, and practicing information professionals. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This study develops and tests a simple model predicting influences on use of voice mail, and influences of voice mail use on later system evaluations. Data were collected in two organisations, using self-report and system-monitored usage measures. The study makes distinctions between individual and organizational innovativeness, communication-based and location-based group interdependence, overall and intentional voice mail usage, and generic and specific appropriateness of voice mail. Results were quite similar across the two organizations. Individual innovativeness had no influence, but organizational conservativeness had a positive influence on system usage, possibly for less innovative uses of voice mail as voice answering rather than as a voice messaging. Task analysability had a small positive influence on usage. Group location interdependency had perhaps the most consistent influence on voice mail usage. Greater intentional self-reported use of voice mail for voice messaging, rather than simple monitored and self-reported amount of usage, had somewhat of a greater influence on system evaluations. Individual and organizational variables had no significant influence system evaluations, controlling for the influence of usage. The discussion provides some suggestions for models of new organizational media use in organizations.

This field experiment investigates individual, structural and social influences on the use of two video telephone systems. One system flourished, while an equivalent system died. We use a time series design and multiple data sources to test media richness theory, critical mass theory, and social influence theories about new media use. Results show that the fit between tasks and features of the communications medium influences use to a degree, but cannot explain why only one system survived. Critical mass—the numbers of people one can reach on a system—and social influence—the norms that grow up around a new medium—can explain this phenomenon.

Collaborations in organizations thrive on communication that is informal because informal communication is frequent, interactive, and expressive. Informal communication is crucial for the coordination of work, learning an organization's culture, the perpetuation of the social relations that underlie collaboration, and, in general, any situation that requires communication to resolve ambiguity. Informal communication is traditionally mediated by physical proximity, but physical proximity cannot mediate in geographically distributed organizations. The research described here evaluates the adequacy of a version of a desktop video/audio conferencing system for supporting informal communication in a research and development laboratory. The evaluation took place during a trial in which the system was used by summer employees and their supervisor-mentors. While the system was used frequently, the most common uses and users' assessments suggest that it was used more like a telephone or electronic mail than like physically mediated face-to-face communication. However, some features of its use transcended traditional media and allowed users to gain awareness of their work environment. The paper concludes with a discussion of requirements for successful technology to support informal communication.

This study asks whether the disciplines of information science and communication are converging, as indicated by a bibliometric study of all core journals of both disciplines in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI®) for the period 1977 to 1987. Results show very little convergence between these disciplines, at least on the basis of cross-disciplinary journal citation patterns, although the number of journals involved has increased slightly over time. A few journals are mainly responsible for the cross-disciplinary citing, and they are primarily information science journals citing communication journals. The results may be of interest to those studying scholarly communication or bibliometrics, to faculty constructing curricula in either of the disciplines, to communication and information science scholars seeking new areas of research, and to collection development librarians in drawing the boundaries of these disciplines. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The development of intercorporate and interindustry ties by firms providing electronic news through videotex and teletext in the US between 1979 and 1984 is discussed in the context of resource dependence theory. Several important trends are noted: (1) the growth in relationships formed between newspapers and cable firms to provide cabletext, (2) the increasing number of affiliate ties involved in both videotex and teletext services, (3) the more binding or permanent ties in videotext relations, and (4) the rather independent role of information providers in videotex compared to the marked dependency between information providers and transmission providers in teletext. © 1988 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This study examines relationships among perceived accessibility to an electronic messaging system (EMS), computer-monitored and reported usage of the system by approximately 100 employees of one division of an aerospace firm, user's job type, perceived appropriateness of the EMS, and reported outcomes such as changes in effectiveness and use of paper-based media. Greater accessibility resulted in more usage and reported increases in effectiveness. Physical distance to a terminal affects the associations of other aspects of accessibility with usage and has a greater influence on these associations earlier in one's adoption process. Differences in job type showed statistically significant associations with usage, independent of the influence of accessibility. Computer-monitored and reported usage measures were only moderately correlated and were differentially associated with the access measures and with the two outcomes. The article ends by discussing implications for implementation and evaluation of computer-based communication systems, theories of media characteristics and information value, and methodological issues in using computer-monitored usage data.

Abstract As computer‐based information retrieval and communication systems become more commonplace, researchers have a greater opportunity to evaluate the uses and impacts of new communication technologies. The systems and the kinds of data now available are discussed along with advantages and disadvantages of using computer‐monitored data.