Or, at least, it's a juicy peephole, says organizational-behavior guru David Owens. Give Owens a piece of anonymous email, and he'll tell you the author's corporate rank and seniority. He can deduce a sender's professional biography from a simple signature file and its inclusion or exclusion of Dilbert quotes, phone extensions, and smiley faces.
Corporate accounts gain credibility and status markers from their email identity.
Touted as the great equalizer among races, sexes, and ages, email is not as egalitarian as some evangelists would like to believe. The killer app of the Information Age does little more than extend existing strata. Owens, an assistant professor of management at the Owen Graduate School of Business at Vanderbilt University, has conducted various behavioral experiments to determine how different team members use the medium for communication and self-expression. Akin to bringing doughnuts to meetings, those low-level communicators immediately respond to colleagues' messages with long, thoughtful letters and chummy jokes. Middle managers also use email to compensate for their distance from the top of the ladder.