Working relationships: assessing the need for media to support close personal relationships at work

Some prior media research has questioned the ability of electronic media to support relationships. This could be a serious impediment to distributed work. However other research indicates that we have few close personal relationships in our ltfe outside work. This study describes a series of questionnaires in which we extended research on relational depth to work. We3nd, as expected, that,jew working relationships are closely personal. Thus, even tfmedia are inadequate in their ability to support close relationships, this may not be a serious concern in real organizations. We view this study as a small step in a long term program to study work re1ationship.s and media.