Communications of the ACM
Communications of the ACM
Maintaining Distributed Relationships
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, against the U.S. instantly changed the role of face-to-face meetings for businesses and governments, as well as for individuals, worldwide. Ironically, in plotting their crimes, the airplane hijackers themselves illustrated the crucial need for at least some face-to-face interaction among the members of any distributed team (despite their use of a variety of electronic media). Can businesses compensate for the diminished capacity of face-to-face communication mandated by the increased risks and time costs of air travel during the war on terrorism? "Even after the recession ends and terror fears abate," said Jaclyn Kostner, a consultant on virtual workgroups who teaches long-distance teams to collaborate, "businesspeople are never going to travel as much as they did. Technology won't replace travel, but it will reduce travel" [6].
Here, we report on a survey of 233 individuals selected from organizations involved in interorganizational relationships, all pioneers in virtual teams from a variety of industries (see the first sidebar "Study Respondents"). From their experience we have derived three main guidelines for maintaining distributedditional relationships: mix and vary communication media; build on prior traditional relationships; and overcome the complexity of distributed tasks through technology that increases overall interaction, collaboration, and communication flow.
Despite the fact that almost 20% of the respondents reported they initially felt coerced into relationships with their counterparts in partnering organizations, they strongly agreed with two statements: "the [distributive] relationship was beneficial to their company" (98%) and "the [distributive] relationship should be continued" (99%). A majority of them trusted both the partnering organization and the safeguards built into the system. Although they viewed face-to-face communication as significantly richer than other media, videoconferencing was viewed as the second richest media and positively related with face-to-face communication. However, perceived richness for both email and fax contact is negatively related to face-to-face communication; the richer one perceives face-to-face communication, the poorer one perceives email and fax contact. Thus, businesses are advised to supplement decreased face-to-face communication with videoconferencing rather than with email and fax alone.
Maintaining distributed relationships is not a new issue but one that needs continuous attention in any business relationship. Distributed teams face new communication challenges yet must still deal with traditional team challenges (such as creating bonds and managing politics). The impact of recent terrorist events on the distributed team scenario has yet to play out completely, but additional distributed relationships have become a cost-effective strategic alternative to address economic and security issues. For example, both PeopleSoft (a subsidiary of Oracle, Inc.) and Ernst & Young doubled their global use of videoconferencing in the six months following 9/11 [6]. Coerced by the times, those who resist distributed relationships may no longer be spared from having to participate in e-mediated communication.
When contracts are used to govern relationships, organizations may feel secure in undertaking distributed relationships, even though the contracts do not guarantee successful business partnerships. Because relationships must be managed, they require communication among the parties involved.
Communication media can be categorized as traditional, electronic, or connecting (see the figure here). Traditional media include established means of business communication, face-to-face communication, and letters. Electronic media include videoconferencing and email. Connecting media refer to the media introduced between the traditional and the electronic media, phone conversation, and fax. The left vertical scale in the figure measures the mean perceived richness for each medium. The actual sample mean calculated from the survey's results (in the ellipse) ranges from a high of 34.65 for face-to-face communication (maximum possible score 40) to a low of 20.28 for letters (minimum possible score eight). Thus, face-to-face communication was perceived by survey respondents as substantially richer than any other media; videoconferencing, the next richest, is clearly ahead of the phone and email, which are statistically equivalent. However, phone and email communications are themselves substantially richer than letters and fax, which are practically (though not statistically) equivalent. For distributed relationships, videoconferencing is an important complement to other media when face-to-face communication is constrained.
Perhaps more interesting than the means for perceived richness is the pattern of correlations among media. The strongest relationship is between letters and fax. If one likes letters, one is more inclined to like faxes, and, conversely, if one does not like letters, one is unlikely to like faxes.
The second strongest and a more important relationship, as reported by the survey respondents, is between the perceived richness of face-to-face communication and the perceived richness of videoconferencing (see the table here). Respondents rating face-to-face communication high also perceive videoconferencing and the phone as rich (see the second sidebar "Measuring Communication Richness"). These results indicate videoconferencing should be used to enrich communication when face-to-face communication is restricted. Also of interest, respondents who perceive face-to-face as particularly rich tend to perceive email and fax as relatively poor in terms of richness.
Survey participants reported they compensate for the lack of face-to-face communication by varying the media they use. Email or fax alone cannot replace the richness associated with face-to-face conversation. However, by combining phone conversation with videoconferencing, collaborators perceive the same richness as face-to-face conversation. By managing and varying communication media, collaborators achieve the desired level of richness needed from the long-distance communication process.
Prefer Face-to-Face Communication
Communication richness theory provides an understanding of what managers achieve when mixing media, which in turn depends on the richness needed to complete the desired task [7]. What communication richness does not explain is why managers still feel face-to-face communication is so valuable or why Al Qaeda endorses meeting in person in the interests of mission success [5, 8].
Media naturalness theory maintains that "modern humans are not optimally designed for e-communication technologies, because these technologies often suppress too many of the elements found in face-to-face communication" [4]. Humans by nature favor the fluency, reduced ambiguity, and emotional aspects of face-to-face communication over newer e-mediated media. The majority of the managers in the study had established relationships with their counterparts in other companies and the familiarity needed to use the less-rich media effectively [4]. Less-rich media did not replace the natural human preference for social presence provided through face-to-face communication [1].
Media naturalness also helps explain why videoconferencing, as rated by the survey respondents, ranks second in richness to face-to-face communication. "To be sure, teleconferencing won't provide the satisfaction of closing a deal with a firm handshake. But managers are finding that today's high-quality videoconferencing allows them to look clients in the eye and read body languagesometimes more clearly than they could in person. The technology is disarming because participants sometimes forget they are being watched" [6].
The preference for email and phone conversations over fax and letters is also explained by media naturalness; timing is controlled, providing degrees of fluency. However, the negligible preference for the phone over email is not explained by media naturalness since ambiguity and lack of immediate feedback can be experienced with email but managed during a phone conversation. Moreover, according to media richness theory [2], since email is an asynchronous medium, its expected score should be comparably much lower than for the phone. This surprising result may signal that frequent email use and technologies (such as instant messaging, automatic messaging, and voice mail) may blur the perceived differences in the richness of email and the phone.
Prior Relationships
A prior traditional relationship is a shared characteristic of many distributed relationships. In the five companies included in the survey, 84% of the respondents indicated they had relationships with partnering companies prior to utilizing electronic links. One manager said, "What we are finding is electronic partnerships work extremely well as long as there has been a relationship built in advance." Characteristics important to consider when selecting electronic partners, revealed in our interviews, include "trustworthiness," "a high degree of trust," "reputations," "past experiences," and "comfort level."
Defense companies are notable for initiating their interest in transitioning to electronic relationships. A majority of the decision makers in four of the five companies surveyed indicated they initiated the relationship. Interestingly, almost 20% of their surveyed decision makers felt coerced by competitive pressure into participating in distributed relationships.
From a strategic business perspective, the greatest contribution of telecommunication technology to a distributed relationship is in how it reduces the costs of communicating over distances. Longer-term relationships lead to the perception of greater cost reductions and trust between collaborating companies. Strategically, telecommunication technology was perceived by survey respondents as an ineffective means of differentiating one's products from the competition.
We were surprised by the lack of distrust between partners, perhaps due to prior relationships being reinforced by contractual agreements. Overall, the majority of survey respondents viewed electronically connected partners as truthful in negotiations and reliable. They reported that being able to agree on how to handle issues and deal fairly with one another were important factors in distributed relationships.
Distributed Task, Increased Interaction
Interestingly, the survey respondents viewed all distributed tasks as complex and in need of specialization, regardless of the nature of the role played by the electronic link. As with traditional face-to-face tasks, managers involved in roles requiring innovation feel greater uncertainty and ambiguity concerning their business environments and tasks than managers involved in routine roles.
One manager said, "The one fear a lot of people have is that it gets rid of interactions with people. I've seen the opposite. What I've seen is the technology ... helps us do our jobs better and actually gives us more time to work on things that are important." Increased interactions require more discussion, since teams are encouraged to solve problems together. Lack of clarity in job tasks often results in further discussion. Communication is a critical tool for managing uncertainty and ambiguity.
Another manager said, "In addition to the tangible benefits as rapid access to development and design, data and metrics, report documentation, and so forth, we really found out that there is a lot of intangible information gained. People that you've never met face-to-face or just ultimately met them down the road really had a sense of camaraderie because you were in daily contact with them."
Conclusion
The study found decision makers in successful distributed relationships still have a fairly traditional view of communication media, along with an updated view of videoconferencing and email. Parties with prior face-to-face relationships have a head start when distributed technology-mediated relationships are established later. The main lesson is that distributed relationships involving complex tasks can be maintained by increasing the frequency and flow of communication.
References
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5. Olofon, C. So many meetings, so little time. Fast Company (Jan.Feb. 2000), 48.
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8. Zernike, K. and Van Natta, D. A nation challenged: The plot; hijackers' meticulous strategy of brains, muscle and practice. New York Times (Nov. 4, 2001), A1.
Figures
Figure. Media richness means. Solid lines represent significant positive relationships and dashed lines significant negative relationships.
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