 Networking or not working: A model of social procrastination from communicationUliana Makarov Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2011, vol. 80, issue 3, 574-585 Abstract: This paper provides an explanation for why many organizations are concerned with “e-mail overload” and implement policies to restrict the use of e-mail in the office. In a theoretical model we formalize the tradeoff between increased productivity from high priority communication and reduced productivity due to distractions caused by low priority e-mails. We consider employees with present-biased preferences as well as time consistent employees. All present-biased employees ex-ante are motivated to read only important e-mail, but in the interim some agents find the temptation to read all e-mail in their inbox too high, and as a result suffer from productivity losses. A unique aspect of this paper is the social nature of procrastination, which is a key to the e-mail overload phenomenon. In considering the firm’s policies to reduce the impact of e-mail overload we conclude that a firm is more likely to restrict e-mail in the case of employees with hyperbolic preferences than in the case of time-consistent employees. Keywords: E-mail overload; Communication; Present-biased preferences; Social spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:80:y:2011:i:3:p:574-585 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.05.016 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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