An empirical investigation of the effects of communication media differences and the social relationship of individuals on the performance of two-party negotiations

A wide variety of new technologies exist to support decision-making and communication activities. While some of these technologies offer people the ability to communicate remotely, they do not allow the same range of communication cues available to participants meeting face-to-face. For instance, electronic mail allows only text communication. Few guidelines exist to advise people as to which media to choose.;This dissertation describes a laboratory study designed to provide an understanding of the effects of media richness on the perceptions and performance of dyads engaged in negotiations. Randomly paired ad hoc dyads and dyads formed in friendship prior to the study tried to come to resolution on a high conflict negotiation problem using one of four media of varying richness. In decreasing order of richness, the media used were: face-to-face, VideoPhone, telephone, and computer-mediated interaction. The history and media manipulations resulted in a 2 x 4 full factorial experimental design. The criterion variables included an objective measure of performance and attitudinal measures of process and solution satisfaction. Measures of individual perceptions of the communications environment were also taken.;While the ad hoc and established groups were significantly different on a number of interpersonal dimensions, they did not differ in their satisfaction or perceptions of the communications environment. The results suggest that the primary determinant of attitudes within established dyads was previous experience with each other. Conversely, within ad hoc dyads, their perceptions seemed to be based on the outcomes they achieved. Contrary to the hypotheses and media richness theory, there was no significant difference in performance between media. Whether or not the negotiating parties were friends, however, did affect performance. Overall, the findings do not lend much support for media richness theory. In negotiation tasks such as the one used in this study, the relationship between parties seems to be the primary influence on both perceptions and performance, not the medium used to communicate.;Media richness theory suggests that the match between the task and the media used to accomplish the task is critical to effective performance. Rich media are advocated for tasks such as negotiation that are unstructured or require the resolution of the meaning of data or the problem. Prior research also suggests, however, that there may be several variables which moderate the media richness-performance relationship. The first is the depth of the relationship or history between the negotiating parties. The second is the level of conflict. For instance, rich media may actually hinder instead of help negotiations where there is high conflict between the parties. This is thought to be due to the extraneous information that can be conveyed with a rich medium. Information not central to the issues themselves, such as body language and eye gaze, may serve to distract the negotiators. The relationship between media richness, conflict, and group history, however, has never been directly assessed.