Work and personal e‐mail use by university employees: PIM practices across domain boundaries

Abstract

In this article, we present findings from a survey of nearly 600 university employees' e-mail use. The study provides a detailed comparison of use patterns between work and personal e-mail accounts. Our results suggest that users engage in more "keeping" behaviors with work e-mail than with personal e-mail-respondents reported more frequent use of keeping actions and larger inbox sizes for their work accounts. However, we found correlations between individual respondents' e-mail behaviors in the two contexts, indicating that personal preferences can play a role. We also report results pointing to e-mail as an important boundary management artifact. We show evidence that the use of multiple e-mail accounts may be a work-personal boundary placement strategy, but also observe that a fair amount of boundary permeation occurs through e-mail. To our knowledge, this study is one of the first to compare e-mail use in both work and personal contexts across the same sample. Our findings extend prior research on personal information management regarding e-mail use, and help inform the role of e-mail in managing work-personal boundaries. The results have implications for the design of e-mail systems, organizational e-mail policies, user training, and understanding the impacts of technology on daily life.

Working 9-5?

“…Following [3,8,13,20] we took a qualitative approach to gain an in-depth understanding of participants' email practices. In particular, this study was designed as an extension of Capra et al [3], who also recruited university participants, but builds on it in three novel ways: first, we take a more qualitative approach; second, we consider cross-device interaction; and third, we compare different professional groups.…”

“…Capra et al [3] conducted a survey-based study (n=596) with university employees (both academics and professional services employees) to look at usage patterns across personal and work email accounts. Their findings suggest that there are strong individual preferences in both contexts and that email is an important boundary management artefact.…”

“…communicating with friends and relatives, and with organisations such as schools and businesses [3,13]. Differences include the software used to check email (desktop vs. web client), the types of emails received, and the email management strategies employed.…”

“…These shifts are known as "microrole transitions" [1] and an example of this is when a parent receives a phone call or email from their child's school whilst at work. People's email strategies partly define where they are positioned along the integrationsegmentation continuum [3].…”

“…Samples have ranged from university employees (faculty staff, students or admins), e.g. [3,6], to technology companies, e.g. [31,32], to a mixture of professions, e.g.…”