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As we begin a new century, the astonishing spread of nationally and internationally accessible computer-based communication networks has touched the imagination of people everywhere. Suddenly, the Internet is in everyday parlance, featured in talk shows, in special business ""technology"" sections of major newspapers, and on the covers of national magazines. If the Internet is a new world of social behavior it is also a new world for those who study social behavior. This volume is a compendium of essays and research reports representing how researchers are thinking about the social processes o

Recent popular and theoretical literature emphasizes the significance of communication technology for collaboration and information sharing across organizational boundaries. We hypothesize that due to the collaborative nature of their work and the way they are organized in work groups, technical employees, as compared with administrative employees, will communicate laterally, and will use the telephone and email for this purpose. We studied technical and administrative employees in seven departments of a large telecommunications firm. From logs of communication over two days, we examined vertical and lateral communication inside and outside the chain of command and department, and the use of telephone, email, and voice mail for this communication. Technical employees did have more lateral communication than administrators did, but all lateral communication (not just that of technical employees) tended to be by telephone. Over 50% of employees' communication was extradepartmental; extradepartmental communication, like lateral communication, tended to be by telephone. When employees used asynchronous technology, technical employees used email whereas administrators, especially those at high levels, used voice. Differential boundary-crossing by technical and administrative employees could be explained in part by the flatter structure of the technical work groups. Our results are consistent with Powell (Powell, W. W. 1990. Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization. Res. Organ. Behavior 12295–336.), Barley (Barley, S. 1994. The turn to a horizontal division of labor: On the occupationalization of firms and the technization of work. National Center for the Educational Quality of the Workforce, University of Pennsylvania, available from author.) and others who have argued that the rise of technical work and the horizontal organization of technical workers increases collaboration and nonhierarchical communication. Organizations can encourage communication flows across organizational boundaries by strengthening horizontal structures (for technical workers, especially) and supporting old and new technology use by all employees.

The electronic survey, a text processing program used to self-administer a computer-based questionnaire, is examined as a research tool. The electronic survey can reduce processing costs because it automates the transformation of raw data into computer-readable form. It can combine advantages of interviews (eg, prompts, complex branching) with those of paper mail surveys (eg, standardization, anonymity). To determine how the electronic survey affects the responses of people who use it, an experimental sample survey (N = 100) was conducted on health attitudes, behaviors, & personal traits, using two forms of administration: electronic & paper mail. Closed-end responses in the electronic survey were less socially desirable & tended to be more extreme than were responses in the paper survey. Open-ended responses that could be edited by Rs were relatively long & disclosing. These findings are consistent with other research on computer-mediated communication, raising general issues about using computers to collect self-report data. 1 Table, 20 References. AA