Technology in the hands of managers: email use by Australian and Hong Kong managers

Since communication plays an important role in the work of managers they are likely to be significant users of e-mail in their daily work. Managers are also influential in technology acceptance and in policy formation. Thus investigating e-mail use by managers is particularly relevant to advance the understanding of organisational efforts to maximize benefits and to minimize problems with e-mail communication. This paper reports on the findings of a survey of managerial use of e-mail within Australian and Hong Kong. The results suggest that while the primary use of e-mail is currently for inter-organisational communication and that e-mail is consuming large amounts of managerial time, particularly for more senior managers. A significant proportion of e-mail received did not appear to contribute to productivity, with both personal e-mails and marketing e-mails constituting a significant proportion of received e-mails. The study suggests that e-mail use will grow as individual and organisational experience increases. We suggest that managers need to consider the time demands caused by the growing use of e-mail.