Information, Technology and Information Worker Productivity

We study the fine-grained relationships among information flows, IT use,and individual information-worker productivity, by analyzing work at amidsize executive recruiting firm. We analyze both project-level andindividual-level performance using: (1) direct observation of over125,000 e-mail messages over a period of 10 months by individual workers(2) detailed accounting data on revenues, compensation, projectcompletion rates, and team membership for over 1300 projects spanning 5years, and (3) survey data on a matched set of the same workers’IT skills, IT use and information sharing. These detailed data permit usto econometrically evaluate a multistage model of production andinteraction activities at the firm, and to analyze the relationshipsamong communications flows, key technologies, work practices, andoutput. We find that (a) the structure and size of workers’communication networks are highly correlated with their performance; (b)IT use is strongly correlated with productivity but mainly by allowingmultitasking rather than by speeding up work; (c) productivity isgreatest for small amounts of multitasking but beyond an optimum,multitasking is associated with declining project completion rates andrevenue generation; and (d) asynchronous information seeking such asemail and database use promotes multitasking while synchronousinformation seeking over the phone shows a negative correlation.Overall, these data show statistically significant relationships amongsocial networks, technology use, completed projects, and revenues forproject-based information workers. Results are consistent with simpleproduction models of queuing and multitasking and these methods can bereplicated in other settings, suggesting new frontiers for bridging theresearch on social networks and IT value.