The Influence of Electronic Transmission on Written Communication

Abstract

The table of contents is not in error; this is an editorial and not an autobiography. In fact, many readers will recognize the title of this editorial as a BITNET (Electronic mail) address, which is exactly what it is. I chose this as my title for several reasons. The first is to inform the readership of my BITNET address and to invite you to correspond with me through BITNET. In this world of budget cuts, telephone tag, and calls from environmentalists to use less paper, communication through BITNET offers an inexpensive, efficient, and environmentally benign alternative. So if you are an author who wants to know the status of your manuscript, a referee who wants to let me know that you will be a couple of weeks late with your review, or simply someone who would like to ask a question or make a comment about the Mid-American Journal of Business, please drop me a line at my BITNET address indicated in the title. I promise I will "bitnet" you back. Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal may want to include their BITNET address on the title page. This would allow me the opportunity to send you a quick message acknowledging my receipt of your manuscript. Electronic communication may not only be a way for communication about the Mid-American Journal of Business, it may someday be the medium through which we read the Mid-American Journal of Business. As a journal that attempts to provide leadership on communication between the academic and practitioner communities, we at the Journal hope to be at the forefront of not only the content of that communication but also the form of the communication. The day may come in the not-too-distant future when your MAJB is delivered to you by electronic mail rather than by your secretary. Manuscript authors will need to consider how such a change in medium would necessitate changes in writing style to account for differences in the perception of the message. MAJB readers would need to be cognizant of how their interpretations of what they are reading would change as they read in a new medium. Some insight into how the medium of the message affects its perception is provided to us by this issue's lead article by Joel Bowman. In his article, Professor Bowman reports on a survey of business p r o f e s s i o n a l s a n d a c a d e m i c s t h a t s h o w s h o w individuals react differently when communicating through different media. I believe that with technological advances, which make communicating through channels such as BITNET and voice mail more commonplace, we all need to be more aware of how our methods and perceptions of communication are affected by the various modes of communication. Bowman's article deserves a careful reading.