An exploratory investigation of two internet-based communication modes

Instant messaging (IM) was first introduced in the late 1990s. It has a relatively short history of adoption compared to other electronic media such as e-mail. In the first few years, the majority of IM users were teenagers. Only a relatively small portion of adult Internet users used IM. Recently as the young IM users gradually enter the workforce, an increasing popularity of IM among working professionals is expected. Consequently, the use of IM in the workplace for job-related task becomes more likely. The potential impact of IM will also become a more important organizational issue. This study compares the use of IM versus e-mail as the communication tool to facilitate group task for geographically dispersed teams. An experiment using 44 teams in the United States was conducted. The results show that teams using e-mail are more effective in terms of generating ideas than teams using IM. There are no significance differences between the two communication methods, in terms of task difficulty, playfulness, and ease of use.