The book is usefully modest in scope, and is aimed primarily at a professional audience. Sproull and Kiesler focus on behavior inside organizations rather than upon the numerous forms of electronic media, including public access systems such as Compuserve, community bulletin boards, or the Internet. Even readers who are concerned with social behavior on these public access networks will find useful insights. Sproull and Kiesler provide a sophisticated understanding of how managing people using email demands subtle expertise. They argue that email does not just substitute one communication means for another, but has a much greater social significance.
Email increases many people's connections both in and out of their organizations.
It transforms social relationships between people who connect electronically rather than in person by increasing the ease and frequency of interaction and democratizing group discussion. The book's ethnographic content is unique among email texts. By providing a window into email's elaborate, but not highly visible environment, Connections supplies crucial knowledge for people who are less conversant with diverse uses. The authors support their theses through engaging examples of group coordination and behavior cues in real copies of email and systematic studies. During the last 10 years, they have developed important empirical research on the ways that groups use electronic media, and the consequences of this use.