Communication and Channel Use in Virtual Work: Experimental Insights

Recent decades have seen an ongoing shift toward virtual work. A major consequence of this shift is the reliance on communication channels, such as text, audio, and video, for communication, collaboration, and information exchange. Since extensive research in various fields has highlighted the positive impact of communication across different workplace situations, it is essential to understand the implications of this change in communication. Virtual communication channels differ in terms of their media richness and capacity to facilitate social presence, raising critical questions about whether the benefits of communication transfer to virtual work settings.
An initial literature review summarized existing experimental research findings on whether using different communication channels impacts behavioral outcomes and outlined important avenues for future research. Based on this review, a controlled experiment investigated people’s preferences for text or video messages when being dishonest. Thereafter, an online study focused on nonverbal information in communication and explored whether enriching virtual pre-play communication with nonverbal cues improves team coordination and cooperation. ... mehrBeyond studies on communication channels, an online field experiment examined virtual work on crowdworking platforms and how preference-personalized casual microtasking systems influence the performance of crowdworkers.
Insights from the literature review revealed that the shift from face-to-face to virtual communication can significantly impact human behavior in workplace settings. While richer communication channels, such as video channels, can mitigate some negative effects, more nonverbal information in one-way communication, such as messages, poses risks. Notably, individuals have preferences for different communication channels, because subjects were significantly more likely to choose text over video messages when lying. Additionally, enriching audio communication with static nonverbal cues in the form of profile pictures significantly reduced team cooperation compared to audio-only and video communication. In the context of crowdwork, the results revealed no positive effects of preference-based personalization on performance. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the fields of economics and information systems by providing experimental insights into how different communication channels shape behavior. These findings offer valuable implications for researchers and practitioners, particularly in the context of ongoing discussions about office-based, remote, and hybrid work arrangements.