摘要：Organizational communications have been studied from several vantage points, and typically as a one-way communication tool. Today, with the burgeoning growth and adoption of new technologies two-way communications have become ever more common. While this paper focuses its research attention to specific forms of e-mail communications between organizations and those it seeks as consumers, a conceptual framework is also presented that sets a foundation for examining and evaluating the myriad of communications alternatives that are available to organizations and the publics they serve. In this exploratory study 165 companies were e-mailed each of two messages and their responses to these e-mails were analyzed. Firms used in the study were selected from seven different industries. The findings reveal that many firms have serious problems responding to fairly simple and common communications. Barely 45% of the firms studied responded to both types of inquiries, and many simply failed to respond. Further, there was considerable variability in the timeliness, clarity and specificity of response. While one may assume that e-mail communication, as a technology is well understood given its proliferation, there are several factors that are discussed that may impede responsiveness – in timeliness, clarity or specificity. As a written form of communication, e-mail presents a challenge common to other forms of written communiqués; they provide a record that can be reviewed subsequent to the exchange between parties involved in communication. As such, organizations may be reluctant to answer all e-mails for a myriad of reasons: some may believe that e-mails place unnecessary or imposing demands on its workforce; some may fear that those responsible for handling the correspondence may be challenged to convey accurate, personalized information in an articulate manner; others simply do not want to have the burden of having to keep a record of such correspondence; yet others may simply view e-mail as a trivial or unimportant, irrespective of whether the communication was marked “urgent” or “confidential” by the sender; and others may fear that their e-mail correspondence is apt to become public, even if marked confidential – as email lacks the advantage of privacy that accompanied other more conventional written messages. Finally, hypotheses for future research based on the Customer Response System model are presented.
