A study on ICT use, interruption management and communication competence in the workplace

• Main Author: Yeo, Irvine Jingcong
• Other Authors: Lee Chei Sian
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54555
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In a typical office environment, workers are usually exposed to many different ICT tools such as instant messaging, email client, web browser, and telephone just to name a few, for fostering collaboration as well as to help them increase their work efficiency and productivity. These workers often have to multi-task across multiple projects and activities and as a result, task switching and interruptions naturally occur. Despite the usefulness of using these ICT tools, they also create loads on users in the form of interruptions such as quantitative and strain demands. Do workers who are more competent in using computer mediated communications face less interruptions loads? This research aims to study the relationships between the use of various ICT tools, interruption management and communication competence and the under lying causes in the Singapore office of a selected Fo~ne 500 company. Data collection was done in the form of an online questionnaire with a response of 162 out of 250 invitations in two rounds. The result indicated some interesting findings such as the younger group being the more competent users in some of the ICT tools such as Emails and Instant Messaging as well as having instant messaging as the most popular ICT tool.