Media Symbolism, Media Richness, and Media Choice in Organizations

TLDR

Symbolic interactionism frames how managers select communication media in organizational settings. The authors interviewed 65 managers from 11 organizations about incidents involving face‑to‑face, telephone, email, and written media to elicit the reasons behind each medium choice. Analysis revealed that ambiguity/richness, symbolic cues, and situational factors drive media choice, with face‑to‑face favored for content and symbolic reasons, while telephone and email were chosen mainly for situational constraints.

Abstract

Symbolic interactionism is presented as a theoretical approach for understanding media choice processes during managerial communications. In an exploratory study, 65 managers from 11 organizations were interviewed about communication incidents involving face-to-face, telephone, electronic mail, and written media. Managers were asked the reasons they chose the particular medium. A content analysis of the reasons suggests that three factors influenced managers' media choices: (a) ambiguity of the message content and richness of the communication medium, (b) symbolic cues provided by the medium, and (c) situational determinants such as time and distance. The findings also indicated the diversity of media use in management communications, with face-to-face selected primarily for content and symbolic reasons, whereas telephone and electronic mail typically were chosen because of situational constraints.