Using Email as a Means of Business Communication

Touro University International

Kevin J. Ingles

BUS 303

Module 3: Case Assignment: Using Email as a Means of Business Communication

Dr. Stephen Rudman

The invention of email has certainly transformed the landscape of communication. In personal communication, it allows relatives and friends to effortlessly communicate with one another. In business communication, it enables companies to inform clients of changes, sales, or other pertinent information. Email can also improve business-to-business relationships by improving communications. Although email offers advantages, it also has some disadvantages. This essay will cover the three biggest problems associated with email regarding written business communications. The three biggest problems are thoughtlessness, lack of intimacy, and vulnerability.

In the world of business the old adage of "time is money" is frequently used in many instances. This often causes those attempting to successfully includes receiving and sending many email messages. When constructing an email message, in order to conserve time, many people often make if brief and write it very quickly. This can lead to emails that lack thoughtfulness. In the electronic world of black and white text messages, it is essential to carefully chose the right words to clearly communicate the desired message. Something as simple as a misplaced comma could cause the reader to receive the wrong message. Another aspect of ensuring that the writer puts the appropriate amount of thoughtfulness into the email message is the fact that email messages can easily turn unpleasant. "In face-to-face encounters, if the conversation gets a little nasty, someone, will back down. You'll hear "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way,' or 'I don't think you understood what I was trying to say. Let me try to explain it a different way. What I meant was...' When is purely electronic, people are more willing to essalate conflict-to get downright rude even. There's a reason that flaming has become so common on the Internet." Putting a proper amount of thought into the email message will increase the chances of the reader receiving the desired and intended message.

The second biggest problem associated with email as a means of sending written business communication is a lack of intimacy. Although this sounds like a topic that would be discussed in a marriage counseling session, it also applied to email messages. The same heartfelt and sincere feelings that can accompany a hand written letter are not in the message of an email. "The intimacy of the handwritten or even just a signature gives a letter certain added emotional weight." An example that does not apply to business but proved the point that that handwritten messages contain more emotion than email messages are letters of war. "A soldier tucked into a foxhole scribbling by hand, looking up to the heavens searching for the right words in a letter that could be his last." However, an example that does apply to business communication is the example of Warren E. Buffett. He "has turned what is possibly the most overly layered and tedious category of all human letters-a chairman's annual report note-into a highly anticipated gift to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders. Each year shortly after New Year's, Buffett sits down with a yellow legal pad and a black felt pen and imagines, according to Lawrence A. Cunninghan of New York's, Cardozo law school and the editor of a new book about Buffett's letters, that he is writing 'to his sister,