A RE-EXAMINATION OF MEDIA RICHNESS THEORY : REALIZING RICH COMMUNICATION IN A LEAN COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION MEDIUM

Media choice and use are an important research issue in communication research literature. It has become even more important when the modern computer technology provides more choices and uses of new media to organizations, such as GSS, e-mail, and computer teleconferencing (all of which can be termed as a computer-mediated communication medium). Media richness theory has been one of the most influential theories in media choice and use for the last decade. However, some recent field studies cast doubts about this theory. Given that media richness theory has been the most dominant theory in guiding organizations for media choice and use, and some recent field studies cast doubts about the theory, the re-examination of the theory becomes really necessary and important. In fact, only recently, media richness theory has gone through empirical testing, and some related issues of the theory still remain largely untested in empirical research, such as the core premise of the theory that media richness is the objective and fixed feature of any media. Therefore, specific research questions in this study are: I. ls media richness really fixed (i.e., to specifically examine and test the core premise of the theory)? 2. Does the presence of a shared social construction (SC) allow a lean CMC medium to appear to be a rich one? 3. Can a lean CMC medium with a shared SC enhance group relational development that requires rich information exchange? Based on a symbolic interactionism perspective, a conceptual research model was derived for this study. The model posits that after a shared SC is built up among group members, rich information could be conveyed through and group relational development could be enhanced in a lean CMC medium. A laboratory experiment was designed to test this research model. The independent variables were communication medium (FtF versus CMC) and shared SC (presence versus absence). The dependent variables included media richness, social presence, group cohesion, group collaboration, decision quality, number of decision alternatives, decision satisfaction, and decision process satisfaction. The major findings were: 1. A lean CMC medium with a shared SC was perceived richer than the same CMC medium without a shared SC, and was even generally perceived as rich as FtF. 2. Group relational development such as group cohesion and collaboration was enhanced in a lean CMC medium with a shared SC, relative to the same CMC medium without a shared SC. 3. Group outcome performance such as decision quality and group satisfaction was generally enhanced in a lean CMC medium with a shared SC, relative to the same CMC medium without a shared SC. These findings have some important implications to C'MC researchers and organizational managers in media choice and use. First, the findings generally support our conceptual research model. Media richness should not be the fixed and inherent feature of any media, but socially constructed. As a result, the media richness-leanness continuum cannot hold, and thus media richness theory should not be used to guide organizational managers in media choice and use any more, as it has done so for the last decade. Consequently, media choice and use may not be a purely simple rational decision process, but should involve a complicated social decision process as well. Second, based on the research findings, the new theoretical concept of perceptual media richness was proposed to be incorporated into media richness theory for extending the theory. The extended media richness theory can reconcile inconsistent research findings in CMC literature. The different research findings in CMC literature may not be essentially inconsistent, but may be due to the presence and absence of shared SCs in their prior research-a lean CMC medium can only effectively convey lean information because of the absence of shared SCs among communicators, as predicted by media richness theory. But the same CMC medium can effectively convey rich information as well by building up shared SCs among communicators, as predicted by the extended media richness theory. Therefore, this study and its findings may contribute to the extension of media richness theory, and to the growing body of CMC research in understanding how a lean CMC medium can be used to convey rich information and enhance group relational development and outcome performance.

Author dc:creator

• HUANG WEI