A59. Rice,
R. E., D'Ambra, J. & More, E. (1998). Cross-cultural comparison of
organizational
media evaluation and choice. Journal of Communication, 48(3),
3-26.
Managers working in four countries reported the richness of five
media, equivocality of 11 situations, preferred media for each
situation,
and cultural values. The richness and equivocality measures were
reliable
and unidimensional. Face-to-face was ranked as most, and business memos
least, rich. Only E-mail and telephone preferences were significantly
correlated
with richness. Media preferences for face-to-face and telephone for
each
situation were highly correlated with the situations’ equivocality.
Respondents
from collectivist countries rated the telephone as less rich, and the
business
memo as richer, than did respondents from individualist countries. This
research has two goals. First, it attempts to assess rigorously the
psychometric
and predictive components of media richness theory, as suggested by
Rice
(1993). Second it attempts to determin whether perceptions of media
richness,
and preferences for media for situations that vary in equivocality,
differ
across cultural values in organizational settings, as hypothesized by
Webster
and Trevino (1995).
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