{"id":3435,"date":"2011-07-26T09:57:36","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T14:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/?p=3435"},"modified":"2011-07-26T10:17:56","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T15:17:56","slug":"e-mail-as-a-source-and-symbol-of-stress-thus-noemail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/e-mail-as-a-source-and-symbol-of-stress-thus-noemail\/","title":{"rendered":"E-mail as a Source and Symbol of Stress; thus #noemail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What email means is as important as what it does and doesn&#8217;t do. That is one of the points of the #noemail project. There are better ways of communication. Those better ways should assist in relieving stress rather than becoming a cultural and individual symbol of overwork and stress.<\/p>\n<p>This paper just out from researchers at Stanford and Boston University does a fine job of quantifying and explaining what email means. May require library access or subscription for access.<\/p>\n<p>I note with some irony that the email addresses of the authors are included in the abstract and in the paper.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you can <a href=\"http:\/\/orgsci.journal.informs.org\/cgi\/mailafriend?url=http%3A%2F%2Forgsci.journal.informs.org%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F22%2F4%2F887%3Fetoc&#038;title=E-mail+as+a+Source+and+Symbol+of+Stress\">&#8220;Email This Article to A Friend&#8221;<\/a> or better to an enemy.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/orgsci.journal.informs.org\/cgi\/content\/abstract\/22\/4\/887?etoc\">ORGANIZATION SCIENCE<br \/>\nVol. 22, No. 4, July-August 2011, pp. 887-906<br \/>\nDOI: 10.1287\/orsc.1100.0573<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>E-mail as a Source and Symbol of Stress<br \/>\nStephen R. Barley, Debra E. Meyerson, Stine Grodal<\/p>\n<p>Department of Management Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305<br \/>\nSchool of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305<br \/>\nDepartment of Strategy and Innovation, School of Management, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215<br \/>\nsbarley@stanford.edu<br \/>\ndebram@stanford.edu<br \/>\ngrodal@bu.edu<\/p>\n<p>The increasing volume of e-mail and other technologically enabled communications are widely regarded as a growing source of stress in people&#8217;s lives. Yet research also suggests that new media afford people additional flexibility and control by enabling them to communicate from anywhere at any time. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, this paper builds theory that unravels this apparent contradiction. As the literature would predict, we found that the more time people spent handling e-mail, the greater was their sense of being overloaded, and the more e-mail they processed, the greater their perceived ability to cope. Contrary to assumptions of prior studies, we found no evidence that time spent working mediates e-mail-related overload. Instead, e-mail&#8217;s material properties entwined with social norms and interpretations in a way that led informants to single out e-mail as a cultural symbol of the overload they experience in their lives. Moreover, by serving as a symbol, e-mail distracted people from recognizing other sources of overload in their work lives. Our study deepens our understanding of the impact of communication technologies on people&#8217;s lives and helps untangle those technologies&#8217; seemingly contradictory influences.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What email means is as important as what it does and doesn&#8217;t do. That is one of the points of the #noemail project. There are better ways of communication. Those better ways should assist in relieving stress rather than becoming a cultural and individual symbol of overwork and stress. This paper just out from researchers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noemail","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3437,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions\/3437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}