Managing perceived communication failures with affordances of ICTs

Affordances of information communication technology (ICT) are often thought to influence communicators’ usage of a communication technology. This is not surprising since ICTs vary on different dimensions; some ICTs may impose constraints while others afford certain resources. Despite the widespread usage of ICTs in the workplace, we are still not clear about how affordances of ICTs support communicators during ICT-supported interaction. This exploratory study aims to understand the relationship between affordances of ICTs and perceived communication failures (i.e. low, moderate, high). Data for this research was collected from a leading global IT consulting company. We found strong association between affordances of ICT and perceived communication failures. In particular, we found that textual and audio affordances were used to manage high perceived communication failures. Additionally, we were able to identify the core and tangential affordances of ICTs that were useful to help organization communicators enhance their communication competence and reduce potential communication failures.