Scott Shirren B.Bus(Prop) Unisa, Grad Dip Psychology Adelaide
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DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES
Submitted by
Scott Shirren B.Bus(Prop) UniSA, Grad Dip Psychology Adelaide
Word Length: 5408
A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Post Graduate Diploma of Psychology
School of Psychology and Psychiatry
Monash University
November 2010 Acknowledgment I would like to acknowledge the direction and encouragement given to me by Dr Jim
Phillips whose advice and support that has assisted me to complete this project. I would also like to thank Professor Leon Mann of the University of Melbourne for the use of his questionnaire and the moderators of the Whirlpool and VW Watercooled internet forums for allowing me to recruit participants on these sites. I would finally like to express my gratitude to Lauren Bell who has given me unfailing encouragement, enabling me to undertake this project. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES i
Abstract
There is a lack of understanding as to the psychological processes that underpin how employees deal with the personal and work related email they receive whilst at work.
Previous research has used self report measures to address employee email behaviours but this falls short of management's capability to monitor the actual behaviour. 39 employed individuals completed a 5 day communication diary recording their actual behaviour upon receiving personal and work related email as well as the Melbourne
Decision Making Questionnaire and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale. It was found that vigilant individuals were more likely to use email in an efficient manner by deleting personal email and being less likely to open email later. Procrastinators, buckpassers and people experiencing high levels of negative affect were all more likely to delay dealing with email, which could be viewed as dealing with email in a less efficient manner.
Consistent with previous research (Baker & Phillips, 2007; Phillips & Reddie, 2007) procrastinators were found to be more likely to reply to a higher proportion of work related emails. This implies that procrastinators are using work related email as a method to delay working on other tasks at work, while still giving the impression to others that they are working. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES ii
Statement of Contribution
• I designed the project. The design is my own, influenced by discussion with my Supervisor.
• I formulated the hypotheses. The hypotheses are my own, influenced by discussion with my
Supervisor.
• I selected the choice of measures. The choice of measures was my own, influenced by discussion with
my Supervisor.
• I collected the data. The online survey and communication diary were created by me, influenced by
discussion with my Supervisor.
• I carried out the analysis. The conclusions are my own, influenced by discussion with my Supervisor.
• I prepared the final report. The content and structure of the report were my own, influenced by
discussion with my Supervisor.
The above represents an accurate summary of my contribution.
Signed ______(student) DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 1
The use of the internet for social communication has become one of the most popular uses of the internet (Amichai-Hamburger, Wainapel, & Fox, 2002). The use of email within an organisation is of particular interest as it has proven to be a useful business tool for improving the efficiency of intra-organisational interaction. An understanding of organisational communication is an essential element to understanding how rapidly changing technology has affected the needs and behaviours of employees (Higgins, McClean, &
Conrath, 1985). As the use of information and communication technologies for work and the delivery of services have grown within organisations, it has led to an unprecedented potential ability to monitor the online activities of employees and record their behaviour (Murray,
Gross, & Ayres, 1999). However, there is still a lack of understanding within organisations as to the psychological processes underpinning the use of technologies that seek to enhance human to human interaction (Saling & Phillips, 2010). In particular, there is a lack of understanding as to the psychological processes underpinning how employees deal with the email they receive whilst at work.
When an employee sends an email, they assume that it has at least some aspect of privacy attributed to it. However, use of an organisation’s internet and email system is not considered private and a permanent trace or record is kept by the organisation for security and auditing purposes (Muhl, 2003). Thus, in theory, organisational email traffic serves as an event recorder (see Shaffer, Peller, LaPlante, Nelson, & LaBrie, 2010) documenting employee work practices. However, as an event recorder email is limited in that it does not determine the actual presence of staff, the nature of the messages (e.g. work, non-work) and the DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 2 motivations associated with the email traffic. Also while it is technically possible to monitor workplace email traffic (e.g. Murray et al., 1999), such surveillance does not necessarily constitute a mechanism for explicitly soliciting informed consent.
Whilst most employees are able to use their organisations email system responsibly, some employees are inclined to use it in a more problematic manner. This can include behaviours like forwarding nuisance emails (eg. Spam or pornography), sending excessive personal emails or using email to intimidate others (see Romm & Pliskin, 1999). The text of an email has been used as evidence of wrongdoing in many cases (Gottschalk, 2005;
Wheelwright, 2002) and contrary to what many people think, deleting an email does not equate to “shredding” a document.
In addition to this, the forwarding of some emails could be a technical infraction of
Australia’s Copyright Act. The act of forwarding an email that contains the original authors work could violate the copyright of the original email’s author (Goldstein, Young, Lawrence,
Boyarski, & Linn, 2001). There is also the potential to misuse the personal information that is contained within an email. Personal information is a valuable commodity and it can be sold to
3rd parties without the owner’s consent or stored in a public place for others to see (Wang,
Lee, & Wang, 1998).
The proliferation of email has also lead to implications for the conduct of online marketing (see Domingos, 2005 and Phelps, Lewis, Mobilio, Perry, & Raman, 2004).
Research has shown that as email traffic increases, the amount of unwanted email such as
“spam” and “Bacn” increases (Dabbish & Kraut, 2006). Spam is defined as unsolicited, unwanted and annoying messages that are generally sent by an unknown sender for their commercial gain (Phelps et al., 2004). Bacn (pronounced bacon) is usually the by-product of DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 3 a user subscribing to legitimate email lists and feeds. Bacn is defined as bulk messages which are sent to subscribed recipients but contain low priority information that the recipient may never find time to read (Glowka, Barrett, Barnhart, Melancon, & Salter, 2008).
Although most people have a preference for sending email over receiving it, it seems in the majority of organisations people receive far more than they send (Renaud, Ramsay, &
Hair, 2006). Hence when an employee receives an email there is a requirement placed on them to efficiently make a decision on how to deal with it in a timely and appropriate manner.
This task is complicated by the fact that the rules of how to manage email are not clear cut and amounts of email are increasing exponentially (Renaud et al., 2006; Whittaker, Bellotti, &
Moody, 2005). There is also evidence that an individual’s ability to make appropriate decisions is diminished by negative affective states like stress (Keinan, 1987), anxiety
(Loewenstein & Learner, 2003) and depression (Radford, Mann, & Kalucy, 1986). This diminished control over how they deal with email may lead them to forward inappropriate messages (e.g. Spam, viruses, private information, etc.) which could cause legal problems for both themselves and for their employers who have responsibility for their actions (Seo, 2009).
Hence negative affect might lead to more inappropriate use of workplace messaging for personal use (Davis 2001; Lim, 2002).
Previous research (i.e. Phillips & Reddie, 2007) has used self report measures to address employee email behaviours. However the reliance of self-reports does depend upon the accuracy of memory (Ericsson & Simon, 1980) and insight (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) into the reported behaviour. Thus there can be inconsistencies between self-reports and the actual behaviour. Hence the use of diaries may serve to document email traffic more accurately
(Higgins et al., 1985), while still offering insights into the nature of the messages (work, non- DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 4 work) and potential psychological mechanisms. In addition, as they require the cooperation of the participant, diaries also have some positive features such as constituting a mechanism of informed consent and providing an educational role to the participant.
Although some authors have suggested the emergence of new norms associated with technology use (Prensky, 2001a; Prensky, 2001b), this is not the most useful position to adopt forensically when seeking to understand internet use (see Warden, Phillips, & Ogloff,
2004). Instead, it is more useful to apply established and generally accepted psychological theories and determine the extent to which they might apply. For instance, Janis and Mann’s
(1977) decision making model has the potential to be applied to dealing with workplace email use as it incorporates the above resourcing issues and makes predictions about the success of decision making and has implications for productivity (Baker & Phillips, 2007).
The receipt of an email can create conflict as the recipient decides whether to act or not on the message. Janis and Mann's (1977) model suggests that coping patterns are determined by the presence or absence of three conditions; awareness of serious risks about preferred alternatives; hope of finding a better alternative; and belief that there is adequate time to search and deliberate before a decision is required (Mann, Burnett, Radford, & Ford,
1997; Baker & Phillips, 2007). A vigilant response considers the alternatives, and is more adaptive, but there are less adaptive and defensively avoidant responses such as procrastination and buck-passing. The outcome of poor time management may be hypervigilance (i.e. panicking) (Janis & Mann, 1977; Mann et al., 1997). An individual will use each of the 4 decisional styles (vigilance, hypervigilance, procrastination and buck- passing) depending on difficulty of a task, timeframe, self-efficacy and the importance of the task itself (Janis & Mann, 1977). DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 5
The present study examines the relationships between each of the decisional styles and an employee’s behaviour when dealing with work related and personal email. Although a vigilant decisional style is the most adaptive response, previous research has not found relationships between vigilance and personal or work related email behaviour (Baker &
Phillips, 2007), nevertheless there are indications that the internet may be used less adaptively by unhappy staff members to slack off (Lim, 2002). Procrastinators are more likely to immediately reply to a personal email and reply to a work related email later (Renaud et al.,
2006; D'Abate & Eddy, 2007), people who are low on buckpassing are more likely to read and respond to all messages immediately (Phillips, Jory & Mogford, 2007) and individuals who have a hypervigilant decisional style will send a higher proportion of work related emails
(Phillips et al., 2007).
Few previous studies have, using behavioural data, examined how people choose to read and reply to personal and work related email messages. Analysis of email-related behaviour as a function of message and user characteristics is important for understanding this communication technology and for the development of tools to help people manage their email. The present study uses a communication diary which will accurately record the exact behaviours under investigation. Most previous studies have relied upon self reports which can be inaccurate or system level reporting which cannot provide information on the psychological motivations, self esteem, etc. that effect an individual’s behaviour. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 6
Hypotheses:
Adaptivity: As the most adaptive response, one might expect vigilance to be related to reduced anxiety. Although not found previously, there might be relationships between vigilance and a more efficient processing of work related emails.
Procrastination: Higher procrastination scores will be associated with a greater proportion of personal emails replied to immediately and work related emails replied to later.
Buckpassing: Lower buckpassing scores would be associated with a greater proportion of emails read and replied to immediately.
Workload/Panic: Higher hypervigilance scores would be associated with a greater proportion of work related emails sent.
Cyberslacking: Negative affect would be associated with a greater proportion of personal emails read and replied to immediately and fewer work related reply emails read and replied to immediately.
DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 7
Method
Participants
From a group of 156 individuals who viewed the online instruction page, 44 individuals completed a communication diary and then filled out an online questionnaire, yielding a 28% response rate. Any online questionnaire responses which did not have all the questions completed were not used in any further analysis. In total, 39 online questionnaires were completed and used in this study. There were 23 females (mean age = 32.0, SD =10.99) and 16 males (mean age = 33.9, SD = 9.17) in the sample.
Materials
A communication diary, the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (Mann et al.,
1997) and the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) were employed.
Communication Diary
The communication diary consisted of an automatically tallying Excel spreadsheet designed to gain information about participants’ behaviour when reading and replying to email messages whilst at work for a period of five working days. Participants filled out a row for each email they received and indicated whether it was a personal/work related email; whether they opened it within 2 minutes of receiving it or postponed opening it; whether they replied or actioned it within 2 minutes of receiving it or postponed replying/actioning it; or whether they deleted/saved it without replying/actioning it.
The distinction between immediately reading and replying to an email was informed by research by Renaud et al. (2006) in which they used software to monitor participants email use. They found that participants who perceived that an email had “high status” were more DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 8 likely to immediately read the email and send a reply. The average time taken to read and reply to an email once it was received was 1m 44s. For ease of recording their behavior, this was rounded up to 2 minutes for the communication diary.
The communication diary spreadsheet automatically tallied the different responses to receiving emails according to the row combinations and placed them in coloured boxes at the top of the spreadsheet to be entered into the online questionnaire (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. : Communication Diary.
Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire
The Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (Melbourne DMQ) measures decisional style and is based on Janis and Mann’s (1977) model of decision making and has DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 9 been shown to be valid in a number of studies (Mann et al., 1997; De Heredia, Arocena, &
Garate, 2004; Phillips etal., 2007). The Melbourne DMQ has good median alpha reliability coefficients cross-culturally over the populations the test has been normed over (buckpassing
0.87, procrastination 0.81, vigilance 0.80 and hypervigilance 0.74). Alpha coefficients for the present sample are similar; buckpassing 0.86, procrastination 0.83, vigilance 0.67 and hypervigilance 0.80. The Melbourne DMQ also includes a decision making self esteem scale which is also being used in this study.
Depression Anxiety Stress Scales
The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995b) are a measure of negative affect. The DASS was designed to provide a relatively pure measure of stress, anxiety and depression. It has shown good convergent validity with other scales designed to discriminate between depression and anxiety (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995b) and has good cross-cultural validity (Henry & Crawford, 2005; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995a).
Alpha coefficients for the DASS have been good across all the populations it has been normed
(depression .91, anxiety .84 and stress .90) (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995a; Lovibond &
Lovibond, 1995b). Alpha coefficients for the present sample are similar; depression .92, anxiety .92 and stress .93.
Relationship between the DASS and Melbourne DMQ
Table 1 shows the relationships between the DASS subscales and the Melbourne
DMQ. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 10 Table 1 Correlations between DASS and Melbourne DMQ subscales
Depression Anxietya Stressb (lo)Decisional
Self-Esteemd
(in)Vigilancec .034 -.11 -.092 .016
Hypervigilance .40 .46 .53 .74
Buckpassing .32 .38 .38 .61
Procrastination .54 .45 .50 .63 (lo)Decisional Self- Esteemd .44 .34 .36 1 aScores natural log transformed bScores square root transformed cScores inverted and square root transformed dScores inverted and square root transformed Note: All correlations in bold are p<.05 (two-tailed)
As would be expected the most adaptive response, vigilance, does not correlate with any of the DASS subscales. The three non-adaptive decisional styles (Buckpassing, hypervigilance and procrastination) all correlate positively with all the DASS subscales which again is an expected relationship. Low decisional self esteem is also positively correlated with all the DASS subscales and the three non-adaptive decisional styles which is consistent with previous research.
Procedure
After ethical approval had been obtained (CF10/1658 – 2010000921) Participants were invited to take part in the study by targeted email advertisements in a number of government departments, the Monash University “Monash Memo” newsletter, the CHI student mailing list, VWWatercooled internet forum and Whirlpool Broadband internet forum. Participants DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 11 were directed to a web page which provided additional information about the study along with links to the communication diary and the online survey. Participants were instructed to fill out the diary for 5 working days and then to fill out the online survey which contained question on the participant’s age, gender, the DASS, the Melbourne DMQ and the totals from the header of the communication diary. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 12
Results
Initial results of the number of personal and work related email received and how participants dealt with them are shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Descriptive statistics for Age, number of personal and work related email received and how participants dealt with them Mean Standard Minimum Maximum Deviation Age Male 33.9 9.17 25 58 Female 32.0 19.99 19 61 Personal Email Total 37.18 27.04 2 103 Proportion 36% 18% 3% 71% Opened Immediately and 35% 24% 0% 100% Replied/Actioned Immediately
Opened Immediately and 7% 10% 0% 50% Replied/Actioned Later
Opened Later and 5% 8% 0% 31% Replied/Actioned Immediately
Opened Later and 4% 6% 0% 25% Replied/Actioned Later
Deleted 39% 27% 0% 100%
Saved 9% 14% 0% 67% DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 13
Table 2 (continued)
Descriptive statistics for Age, number of personal and work related email received and
how participants dealt with them
Mean Standard Minimum Maximum Deviation Work Related Email Total 68.56 48.94 15 228 Proportion 64% 18% 29% 97%
Opened Immediately and 25% 11% 8% 60% Replied/Actioned Immediately
Opened Immediately and 9% 8% 0% 32% Replied/Actioned Later
Opened Later and 4% 5% 0% 16% Replied/Actioned Immediately
Opened Later and 5% 5% 0% 22% Replied/Actioned Later
Deleted 38% 19% 0% 78%
Saved 19% 12% 0% 47%
The results show that on average participants are receiving approximately 100 emails every week and deleting approximately 40%. When a participant replied to a received email they were more likely to do so in a synchronous manner by reading and replying immediately.
Participants also saved a higher proportion of work related email that personal email, presumably due to the higher informational value of work related emails. These results are consistent with the findings of Dabbish, Kraut, Fussell and Kiesler (2005) who found similar proportions of emails were replied to immediately, saved and deleted by employees. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 14
Descriptive statistics for the subscales of the DASS and Melbourne DMQ are shown in Table
3.
Table 3
Mean and Standard Deviations of DASS and Melbourne DMQ scales N Mean Standard Minimum Maximum Skew Deviation DASS Depression 39 7.3 6.46 0 24 0.68 Anxiety 39 4.85 5.64 0 18 1.16 Stress 39 11.44 8.33 0 33 0.95 Melbourne DMQ Decisional Self Esteem 39 8.46 2.27 3 12 -0.52 Vigilance 39 10.05 2.00 6 12 -0.74 Hypervigilance 39 3.51 2.38 0 10 0.67 Buckpassing 39 4.31 2.73 0 12 0.47 Procrastination 39 3.64 2.44 0 9 0.51
The mean scores obtained by the present sample are similar to the norms published in the DASS Manual (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). The present sample differed from the norms published for the Melbourne DMQ (Mann et al., 1997) with a lower mean
Hypervigilance score t(2055)=3.01, p=.003. This may be due to the difference in the underlying sample populations. An inspection of the skew values each of the subscales revealed that the Anxiety and Stress subscales were strongly positively skewed and the
Decisional Self Esteem and Vigilance subscales were negatively skewed. The anxiety scale was natural logarithm transformed (adding 1 to raw scores to avoid problems with 0 values) and the Stress subscale was square root transformed. The Decisional Self Esteem and
Vigilance subscales were inverted and square root transformed. Higher values thus reflect poor decisional self esteem and invigilance for the transformed scales. The assumption of DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 15 normal distribution was better achieved after the data were transformed as can be viewed in
Table 4.
Table 4
Means, Standard Deviations, minimum, maximum and skew of Anxiety, Stress, Decisional Self esteem and Vigilance after transformation N Mean Standard Minimum Maximum Skew Deviation Anxiety 39 0.56 0.44 0 1.28 0.18 Stress 39 3.14 1.28 0 5.74 0.018 (lo) Decisional Self Esteem 39 2.06 0.55 1 3.16 -0.11 (in) Vigilance 39 1.62 .58 1 2.65 0.36
Adaptivity
After normalising and inverting the vigilance subscale the level of (in)vigilance was not correlated with the level of anxiety (r=-.11, p=.51), nor with the number of replies to work related emails (r=.09, p=.57). These results are consistent with previous research. Subsequent analysis shows that (in)vigilance scores were negatively correlated to the proportion of personal email deleted (r=-.31, p=.05) accounting for 10% of the variance, this means that as vigilance scores increase the proportion of personal email deleted also increases. The normalised and inverted (in)vigilance scores were also positively correlated to the proportion of personal email opened later but replied/actioned immediately (r=.42, p=.007) and work related email opened later but replied/actioned immediately (r=.46, p=.004) accounting for
18% and 21% of the variance respectively. This means that as vigilance increases the proportion of personal and work related emails that are opened later but replied/actioned immediately decreases. This is also reflected in the positive correlation between (in)vigilance and the proportion of total email that was opened later (r=-.40, p=.01) accounting for 18% of DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 16 the variance and means that as vigilance increases the proportion of total emails opened later decreases.
Procrastination
Higher procrastination scores were not correlated with a higher proportion of personal emails replied to immediately (r=-.14, p=.41), nor with the proportion of work related email that was replied to later (r=.3, p=.063). Subsequent analysis shows that higher procrastination scores are positively correlated with the proportion of personal email that is opened immediately but that are replied to later (r=.40, p=.012) and with the number of work related email replied in total (r=.34, p=.034) and accounted for 16% of the variance and 12% of the variance respectively. These findings show that individuals who are high in procrastination are more likely to put off replying to the personal emails that they receive. Procrastinators are also more likely to reply to a higher number of work related emails, consistent with previous research which indicated that procrastinators were using work email as a source of procrastination.
Buckpassing
Lower buckpassing scores were not correlated with a higher proportion of emails read immediately (r=-.029, p=.86) or replied to immediately (r=-.023, p=.89). Subsequent analysis showed that higher buckpassing scores were positively correlated with the proportion of personal email that is opened immediately but that replied to later (r=.39, p=.014) accounting for 15% of the variance. This suggests that buckpassers are less likely to take action in response to emails. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 17
Workload/Panic
Higher hypervigilance scores were not correlated with higher proportions of work related emails sent (r=-.12, p=.48). Subsequent analysis found that higher hypervigilance scores do not have significant relationships with any of the email response measures studied.
Analysis of the total number of work related emails received found that there was a positive relationship between the amount of work related email received and stress as measured by the
DASS (r=.34, p=.033) accounting for 12% of the variance. This finding is consistent with previous findings that increased levels of work related emails may be a source of stress for employees.
Cyberslacking
Higher total negative affect scores were negatively correlated with the proportion of personal emails read and replied to immediately (r=-.36, p=.024) and accounted for 13% of the variance. This relationship is in the opposite direction to what was expected. Higher total negative affect scores were not correlated with the proportion of work related emails read and replied to immediately (r=.032, p=.85). Subsequent analysis found that total negative affect was negatively correlated with the proportion of work related email that was opened immediately (r=-.32, p=.045) accounting for 10% of the variance. These findings indicate that individuals with higher levels of negative affect are less likely to read and reply to their personal emails immediately and are also less likely to open work related emails immediately. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 18
Discussion
The present study sought to examine the relationships between decisional styles, negative affect and the behaviour of employees’ in dealing with work related and personal email. Few previous studies have, using behavioural data, examined how employees choose to read and reply to personal and work related emails messages whilst at work. There were clear differences in the way that people with different decisional styles and levels of negative affect dealt with their email. There was also a positive relationship between the amount of work related email an individual receives and their level of stress, which confirms similar findings in other research (Renaud et al., 2006).
The proportion of personal email received by the participants in this study (36%) is somewhat higher than recorded in other studies which used self-reports (e.g. 25% Phillips &
Reddie, 2007). Studies which use self-reports are vulnerable to social desirability and rely upon accuracy of memory (Ericsson & Simon, 1980) and insight (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) into the reported behaviour. The higher recorded proportion of personal email received at work may reflect the higher degree of accuracy provided by using a diary to record behaviours
(Higgins et al., 1985). Receiving a high amount of personal email at work increases the risk of negative repercussions due to spending too much time off task. This is especially true when the individual should be working on something more important.
The finding that almost 40% of all email received by participants at work was deleted shows that a high proportion of both work related and personal emails a person receives may be of low value. This is similar to the findings by Dabbish et al. (2005) who found that participants deleted 24% of their non-spam email at work. Although some of the deleted DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 19 emails will contain important work-place notices or information, there will be a high proportion of bulk administrative announcements and automatic system alerts which may not be of immediate or direct relevance to the recipient (Venolia, Dabbish, Cadiz, & Gupta, 2001).
Sorting through these excess emails wastes employees' time, decreases productivity and potentially detracts from the quality of their work (Shulman, 2009). This highlights the need for systems that can deprioritise and screen such messages (e.g. Aberdeen, 2010; Lee,
Chandrasena, & Navarro, 2002) to reduce the amount of time employees spend dealing with them.
Adaptivity
A vigilant decisional style involves making a considered decision based on all the alternatives, using all the information available (Mann et al., 1997). The results show that vigilant individuals are less likely to postpone opening email that they receive. A vigilant person uses all the information available to them before making a decision and the text of an email provides vital information to help decide the best way to deal with each email as it comes. This also explains the lower proportion of emails that are opened later but replied to immediately, as emails which require an immediate response would be important enough for a vigilant person to read them straight away.
The finding that vigilant individuals delete a higher proportion of personal emails indicates that they are better able to filter out email that is disruptive or inappropriate to their work. Previous research has found that limiting the amount of personal business conducted at work can lead to improved work outcomes and prevent adverse consequences
(Mahatanankoon, Anandarajan, & Igbaria, 2004). A more vigilant person is therefore less likely to forward or reply to a personal email that is inappropriate at work or contains sensitive DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 20 information (Gottschalk, 2005). This will help shield their workplace as well as themselves from the negative repercussions of inappropriate personal email.
Procrastination
Although it was predicted that individuals scoring higher in decisional procrastination would be more likely to reply to personal emails immediately, the opposite was found, with procrastinators preferring to read the personal email immediately and then reply to it sometime later. This postponement in replying may be an attempt to delay making a decision about how to respond to a new email or just reflect a poorer ability to prioritise tasks in general. The finding that decisional procrastination is positively correlated with the number of work related emails that are replied to, is consistent with previous research (Phillips &
Reddie, 2007) which found that procrastination was a predictor of the amount of time reported being spent on work related emails.
This relationship between procrastination and work-related email may be due to the increased focus of organisations on preventing employees sending inappropriate personal email at work, as well as the permanence of email messages and their ability to be used as evidence of wrongdoing (Gottschalk, 2005; Wheelwright, 2002). Procrastinators may be sending work-related email as a way of putting off other tasks (Baker & Phillips, 2007 also observed this behaviourally), while still giving the impression to others that they are working.
Henle and Blanchard (2008) found that employees were more likely to procrastinate on tasks for which there were few, if any, sanctions if they were discovered, which may explain the increased use of work related email. However, this may make them more susceptible to sending an email that they shouldn’t (Romm & Pliskin, 1999; Wheelwright, 2002). The relationship between non-adaptive decisional styles such as procrastination and negative affect DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 21 may also mean that their ability to make appropriate decisions with regards to sending emails is diminished which could cause legal problems for both themselves and for their employers who have responsibility for their actions (Seo, 2009).
Buckpassing
The suggested relationship between lower buckpassing scores and a greater proportion of emails read and replied to immediately was not observed in the present study. Lower levels of buckpassing appear to have predicted "volunteering" in previous studies using a student sample (Phillips et al., 2007), instead it appears that buckpassers "lurk" and are less likely to respond (Preece, Nonnecke, & Andrews, 2004). As with procrastination, a positive relationship between buckpassing and the proportion of personal emails opened immediately but replied to later was found. This relationship was not expected because personal email is usually addressed directly to the recipient which increases the likelihood of a prompt response through diminishing the bystander effect (Markey, 2000). It is possible that this relationship is being mediated by a common aspect of buckpassing and procrastination such as increased negative affect or diminished information processing ability.
Workload/Panic
The current study was unable to find a relationship between the level of hypervigilance and the email response measures studied. The mean hypervigilance score (M=3.51, SD= 2.00) of the present sample was somewhat lower than the norm published for the Melbourne DMQ
(M=4.61, SD=2.26) (Mann et al., 1997). The participants in the current study were all employed, which may have screened out individuals who have a high level of hypervigilance and may not be suited to the type of work required to participate in this study. De Heredia et al. (2004) similarly found that the level of hypervigilance in professional workers was lower DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 22 than that found in students. Hypervigilance is characterised by franticly searching for a way out of dilemmas and impulsively seizing upon hastily contrived solutions that promise relief
(Mann et al., (1997). Burns, Dittmann, Nguyen and Mitchelson (2000) found that working in a professional field requires a more spontaneous, less rushed style that is not compatible with a hypervigilant decisional style.
There was a relationship found between receiving higher numbers of work related email and higher levels of stress as measured by the DASS in the current study. This relationship is consistent with findings by Renaud et al. (2006) who found that making decisions about how to deal with email and perceived lack of control over their work environment was a source of stress for employees. High levels of stress have been shown to reduce an individual’s ability to process information due to prematurely reaching a decision before all alternatives have been examined and scanning alternatives in a non-systematic fashion (Keinan, 1987). This can lead individuals to miss cues or broader context that might have aided in dealing with email more efficiently and appropriately.
Cyberslacking
The relationship between negative affect scores and the proportion of personal emails read and replied to immediately was in the opposite direction to what was expected. The present study found that individuals with higher negative affect scores were less likely to open and respond immediately to personal email. Higher negative affect was also found to be positively related to postponing the opening of work related emails. These findings indicate that instead of being more likely to engage in cyberslacking, individuals experiencing higher levels of negative affect such as stress, anxiety and depression are less effective at processing DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 23 email. These findings are also confirmed by the relationship between high levels of negative affect and less adaptive decisional styles.
This behaviour may also be explained by the link between depression and psychomotor retardation in which depressed individuals were found to have decreased decision, reaction and motor response time (Ghozlan & Widlocher, 1989). Depressed individuals have been found to have slower deliberation times (Murphy et al., 2001) and a lack of energy (Steel, 2007) that could explain the current findings of delayed responses to received personal and work related emails. This would indicate that rather than avoiding email to avoid negative feelings, the delay is caused as a consequence of depressed psychomotor abilities.
This delay in opening email at work may mean that employees with higher levels of negative affect may be perceived as lazy or that they are avoiding work. In the case of an employer who uses email response times as a measure of work ethic (Romm & Pliskin, 1999), this could lead to an unfair appraisal of an employee’s performance. The findings also raise issues with the likely efficacy of ecounselling which relies on the timely exchange of email to maintain a therapeutic relationship and to exchange information that may be emotionally difficult for the client to read (Baraka, Hena, Boniel-Nissima, & Shapira, 2008). If the client postpones reading the therapist's emails or doesn’t read them at all, this makes the use of ecounselling difficult.
Implications
The current findings suggest that employees with an adaptive decisional style are more likely to deal with personal and work related email in a way that may be viewed in a positive way within their workplace. There is an expectation that email will be used in a synchronous DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 24 manner (Renaud et al., 2006) and those who are delaying either reading or responding are thought to be less efficient workers. The findings show that employees who are prone to use a less adaptive decisional style or who are experiencing a high level of negative affect are more likely to use email in a way that attracts unnecessary attention to them. Efforts need to be made to educate employees in how to deal with email in a more efficient manner by training them in how to deal with low quality email and how to reduce the amount of low quality email they send (see Henle & Blanchard, 2008).
Organisations have been proactive in informing employees of their policies regarding the use of work computers for personal business in an effort to reduce inappropriate use. This has worked to some degree but for employees who are procrastinating by sending work related emails it misses the mark. The potential consequences of sending personal emails at work identified by Mahatanankoon et al. (2004) such as legal liability and the cost of network slowdown, apply equally to sending work related emails as well. Employers will need to ensure that employees understand the risks to themselves and to the employer of sending work related emails to waste time. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 25 Addressing the number of low quality emails that employees receive will also provide benefits to employees. The current study found that 40% of work related emails were deleted, each of these unwanted emails is a distraction from current tasks and takes time to manually screen. Systems that prioritise an employee’s inbox (Lee et al., 2002) or sort received emails into folders (Aberdeen, 2010; Lee et al., 2002) could provide productivity gains for employees who are being barraged with low priority email. Organisations could also make use of alternate methods for distributing mass information electronically like using internal web pages or online newsletters which employees could view at their convenience. Another alternative might be to charge people for emails as is done with mobile phone messages,
Kraut, Sunder, Telang and Morris (2005) found that charging postage on an email caused senders to be more selective and to send fewer messages.
Future Directions In the present study, conclusions based on the content and value of the emails that were read and replied to were limited due to the scope of the communication diary. Future research should consider analysing the content and value of each email using methods such as the Gmail priority inbox (Aberdeen, 2010) or that used in the research by Lee et al. (2002) to further assist in the understanding of an individual’s use of email. The communication diary was further limited due to the burden of having to manually enter the data each time an email was sent or received. This may have reduced the number and mix of participants who completed the study which reduces the generalisability of the findings. Automating the collection of the data could potentially increase participation, however this would involve recording the content of participants email and this could lead to resistance in providing DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 26 informed consent or necessitate the deletion of confidential email as was done in the study by
Bellotti, Ducheneaut, Howard, Smith and Grinter (2005).
The low number of participants in the current study precluded the use of multiple regression as it increased the likelihood of shrinkage (accounting for inflated proportions of variance with subsequent problems of replication). Whilst many of the findings observed in this study were consistent with the results of previous research, there is still a need to replicate this study with a larger sample and cross-validate the findings. This will ensure that the findings can be reliably applied to more general populations and inform organisational processes for how employees use email systems in a more adaptive manner. The use of correlational analysis in the current study due to low participant numbers restricts conclusions about the causal relationships in the current findings. Future research with measurements of participant’s behaviours over a period of time might better allow causality to be established between the variables examined in the current study.
Conclusion
Decisional style can predict how an employee will behave when dealing with personal and work related email whilst at work. Vigilance was related to dealing with email in a more appropriate manner. Procrastination was related to sending more work related emails and delaying replying to personal email that was opened immediately. Buckpassing was also related to delaying replying to personal email that was opened immediately. Higher numbers of work related emails were related to higher levels of stress. Higher levels of negative affect were related to a delay in dealing with both personal and work related email. It was recommended that organisations educate employees in how to respond to emails in a more DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 27 adaptive manner or install systems which sort and prioritise emails to aid in more efficient use of email and reduce the number of low quality emails that employees receive. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 28
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Appendix 1 DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 36
Correlation Matrix DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 37 DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 38
Appendix 2
Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire Instructions: People differ in how comfortable they feel about making decisions. Please indicate how you make decisions by ticking for each question the response which best fits your usual style.
2 - True for Me 1 - Sometimes True 0 - Not True for Me
I feel confident about my ability to make decisions
I feel inferior to most people in making decisions
I think that I am a good decision maker
I feel so discouraged that I give up trying to make decisions
The decisions I make turn out well
It is easy for other people to convince me that their decision rather than mine is the correct one
Instructions: People differ in the way they go about making decisions. Please indicate how you make decisions by ticking for each question the response which best fits your usual style. 2 - True for Me 1 - Sometimes True 0 - Not True for Me
When making decisions -
I feel as if I'm under tremendous time pressure when making decisions.
I like to consider all of the alternatives.
I prefer to leave decisions to others.
I try to find out the disadvantages of all alternatives.
I waste a lot of time on trivial matters before getting to the final decision.
I consider how best to carry out the decision.
Even after I have made a decision I delay acting upon it.
When making decisions I like to collect lots of information. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 39
I avoid making decisions.
When I have to make a decision I wait for a long time before starting to think about it.
I don't like to take responsibility for making decisions.
I try to be clear about my objectives before choosing.
The possibility that some small thing might go wrong causes me to swing abruptly in my preferences.
If a decision can be made by me or another person I let the other person make it.
Whenever I face a difficult decision I feel pessimistic about finding a good solution.
I take a lot of care before choosing.
I don't make decisions unless I really have to.
I delay making decisions until it is too late.
I prefer that people who are better informed decide for me.
After a decision is made I spend a lot of time convincing myself it was correct.
I put off making decisions.
I can't think straight if I have to make decisions in a hurry. DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 40
Appendix 3 DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 41
Depression Anxiety Stress Scale DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 42
DAS S Name: Date:
Please read each statement and circle a number 0, 1, 2 or 3 which indicates how much the statement applied to you over the past week. There are no right or wrong answers. Do not spend too much time on any statement.
The rating scale is as follows: 0 Did not apply to me at all 1 Applied to me to some degree, or some of the time 2 Applied to me to a considerable degree, or a good part of time 3 Applied to me very much, or most of the time
1 I found myself getting upset by quite trivial things 0 1 2 3 2 I was aware of dryness of my mouth 0 1 2 3 3 I couldn't seem to experience any positive feeling at all 0 1 2 3 4 I experienced breathing difficulty (eg, excessively rapid breathing, 0 1 2 3 breathlessness in the absence of physical exertion) 5 I just couldn't seem to get going 0 1 2 3 6 I tended to over-react to situations 0 1 2 3 7 I had a feeling of shakiness (eg, legs going to give way) 0 1 2 3 8 I found it difficult to relax 0 1 2 3 9 I found myself in situations that made me so anxious I was most 0 1 2 3 relieved when they ended 10 I felt that I had nothing to look forward to 0 1 2 3 11 I found myself getting upset rather easily 0 1 2 3 12 I felt that I was using a lot of nervous energy 0 1 2 3 13 I felt sad and depressed 0 1 2 3 14 I found myself getting impatient when I was delayed in any way 0 1 2 3 (eg, lifts, traffic lights, being kept waiting) 15 I had a feeling of faintness 0 1 2 3 16 I felt that I had lost interest in just about everything 0 1 2 3 17 I felt I wasn't worth much as a person 0 1 2 3 18 I felt that I was rather touchy 0 1 2 3 19 I perspired noticeably (eg, hands sweaty) in the absence of high 0 1 2 3 temperatures or physical exertion 20 I felt scared without any good reason 0 1 2 3 21 I felt that life wasn't worthwhile 0 1 2 3
DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 43
Reminder of rating scale: 0 Did not apply to me at all 1 Applied to me to some degree, or some of the time 2 Applied to me to a considerable degree, or a good part of time 3 Applied to me very much, or most of the time
22 I found it hard to wind down 0 1 2 3 23 I had difficulty in swallowing 0 1 2 3 24 I couldn't seem to get any enjoyment out of the things I did 0 1 2 3 25 I was aware of the action of my heart in the absence of physical 0 1 2 3 exertion (eg, sense of heart rate increase, heart missing a beat) 26 I felt down-hearted and blue 0 1 2 3 27 I found that I was very irritable 0 1 2 3 28 I felt I was close to panic 0 1 2 3 29 I found it hard to calm down after something upset me 0 1 2 3 30 I feared that I would be "thrown" by some trivial but 0 1 2 3 unfamiliar task 31 I was unable to become enthusiastic about anything 0 1 2 3 32 I found it difficult to tolerate interruptions to what I was doing 0 1 2 3 33 I was in a state of nervous tension 0 1 2 3 34 I felt I was pretty worthless 0 1 2 3 35 I was intolerant of anything that kept me from getting on with 0 1 2 3 what I was doing 36 I felt terrified 0 1 2 3 37 I could see nothing in the future to be hopeful about 0 1 2 3 38 I felt that life was meaningless 0 1 2 3 39 I found myself getting agitated 0 1 2 3 40 I was worried about situations in which I might panic and make 0 1 2 3 a fool of myself 41 I experienced trembling (eg, in the hands) 0 1 2 3 42 I found it difficult to work up the initiative to do things 0 1 2 3
DECISION MAKING STYLE AND WILLINGNESS TO READ AND REPLY TO EMAIL MESSAGES 44
Appendix 4
Ethics Approval Certificate