E-mail Inverted Interest Index Theory: A Case-Study of Electronic Communication in a Strategic Planning Initiative at a Four-Year Public University

Electronic communication has become increasingly prevalent in organizational settings. Strategic planning researchers have noted the importance of communication to the success of planning and the increasing reliance on electronic communication in planning initiatives. However, despite increasing attention by researchers, its efficacy is not yet widely understood in the planning process or other organizational settings. This study, initiated during participant observation of a higher education strategic planning initiative, is founded on the premise that the hybrid nature of electronic mail – having elements of interpersonal and mass communication – calls for more research based on organizational and mass communication theory, such as media richness, social influence, mass media models, and the diffusion of innovation theory. The finding that all but the most engaged planning participants reported being overwhelmed by list-serv E-mails led to the development of the E-mail Inverse Importance Index grounded theory, which holds “The more important a sender perceives an item of information to be, the more people he or she will send it to in a mass distribution electronic mail. Inversely, the more people who receive the mass distributed E-mail, the less important the receiver will perceive the information to be to himself or herself directly.