An empirical study on the factors influencing the utilization and the effectiveness of enterprise instant messenger

Communication technology has been recognized to play an important role in boosting organization's competitiveness and viability by facilitating efficient communication and information sharing. Lately, many organizations began to actively adopt the self-developed Enterprise Instant Messenger (EIM) as a common organizational communication medium after experiencing security problem with public messengers like MSN. Its utilization and tangible benefits of EIM, however, vary. There's an urgent need to understand how each organization embraces EIM and to empirically evaluate whether active use of EIM can result in a better communication, eventually leading into better business productivity. In this research we try to investigate those antecedents which may have affected the high use of EIM and a better decision making efficiency. Theoretical justification of research variables and causal relationships of our research model are mainly based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), media selection theory, and social influence model. Through a survey data analysis of 171 EIM users, it was found that perceived usefulness, social influence, the externally-orientated organizational culture had a significant effect on the high use of EIM. In addition, the use of EIM was found to have a significant effect on the efficiency in the decision-making process.