You’ve got mail – whether you want it or not: An emic investigation into how email use can be managed

Despite the best attempts of researchers and the tomes of advice in the consulting and grey literature, many continue to experience email overload and the volume of email employees manage is staggering. A troubling problem given that email overload and volume have been linked to negative wellbeing outcomes for employees. This paper reports on a qualitative study undertaken to help researchers and practitioners better understand email management from the point of view of email users. A sample of 30 knowledge workers were interviewed and asked to identify personal and workplace changes that could help them better manage their use of email. Fifteen informants worked in the public sector (education) while the other 15 worked in a private sector firm (insurance industry). The study took an interpretivist approach with content coding of the semi-structured interviews to develop sensitizing constructs. Analysis of the data uncovered a strong link between what users were telling us and some of the major tenants of attribution theory: locus of causality and stability. Most importantly, we found that most of the knowledge workers we spoke to felt that they could do little personally to manage their use of email. Rather, they felt email management was the responsibility of others (e.g., policies, training, technology). Responses were consistent with a self-serving attribution bias and consistent with the norms in place in organizations supporting an ideal worker culture. This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it shows most employees do not take responsibility for their email management problems. Implying that email management needs to be tackled at the organizational level. Second, it provides organizations and employees with practical advice on how they can start to address issues with email management. Third, our findings contribute to theoretical development in this area by exploring email management issues through an attribution theory lens. • Employees blame others and their organizations for their email problems. • As long as employees make a self-serving attribution bias, we cannot rely people to fix their email issues on their own. • As long as the culture and the organization reward after hours work, we will not be able to solve the email problem.