IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ugitxx/v13y2010i2p37-75.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Communication Openness in the Workplace: the Effects of Medium (F2F and IM) and Culture (U.S. and China)

Author

Listed:
  • Shu Z. Schiller
  • Jiaying Cui

Abstract

Open communication is critical to the effectiveness, efficiency, and overall success of a business. It is believed that communication openness interplays with media channels and cultural contexts in which the communication takes place. Our study investigated communication openness in downward, peer, and upward directions in face-to-face (F2F) and instant messaging (IM) in the workplace in both the United States and China. An online survey was administrated in both countries, and we received 529 valid responses. Repeated measures of ANOVA and MANOVA were used for data analysis. We found that the degree of openness in communication was higher in F2F conversations than through IM; however, this relationship differed in the two cultures. When communicating F2F, American employees were generally more open than Chinese employees, especially when such communication happened between peer colleagues. When communicating through IM, Chinese workers, however, were far more open than American workers in all downward, peer, and upward directions. The main findings, the implications for research and practice, and the limitations of this study were discussed accordingly.

Suggested Citation

  • Shu Z. Schiller & Jiaying Cui, 2010. "Communication Openness in the Workplace: the Effects of Medium (F2F and IM) and Culture (U.S. and China)," Journal of Global Information Technology Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 37-75, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ugitxx:v:13:y:2010:i:2:p:37-75
    DOI: 10.1080/1097198X.2010.10856514
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1097198X.2010.10856514
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/1097198X.2010.10856514?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yuwan Dai & Hao Li & Wenting Xie & Tianyi Deng, 2022. "Power Distance Belief and Workplace Communication: The Mediating Role of Fear of Authority," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-14, March.
    2. Daniel Chandran & Abdullah M. Alammari, 2021. "Influence of Culture on Knowledge Sharing Attitude among Academic Staff in eLearning Virtual Communities in Saudi Arabia," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 1563-1572, December.
    3. Lee, Sang-Gun & Trimi, Silvana & Kim, Changsoo, 2013. "The impact of cultural differences on technology adoption," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 20-29.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ugitxx:v:13:y:2010:i:2:p:37-75. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ugit .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.