Functions and strategies of email communication at the workplace

Abstract

Email communication has been the communication medium for most organizations nowadays as the Internet has become a way of life for most people. To serve the purposes of communication in organizations, email is used to coordinate action, share information and satisfy social needs. This research was carried out to examine the patterns of email communication in a public higher education institution in Malaysia. A total of 86 emails consisting of 40 email chains and five one-way communication emails were collected over a period of four weeks. These emails were analyzed for functions and strategies used by the email writers. It was found that writers of email are aware of the strategies available for disseminating information and they used the strategies differently depending on the situation, the people involved in the interaction and the subject matter.