Case Study Email Assignment: CONTENT Instructions

Communication Case: The Possible Downside of E-mail

This exercise asks you to assess the questionable use of e-mail to handle an employee/employer situation. You are asked to determine whether e-mail was an appropriate communication channel given the situation and to prepare your response as an e-mail to the instructor.

You are an editor for a small local newspaper owned by a large corporation. Your corporate supervisors manage you more-or-less virtually from more than 100 miles away, allowing you and your coworkers to run day-to-day operations on your own. This arrangement works quite well when there are no issues in need of resolution; however, when a coworkers behavior becomes increasingly erratic and disruptive, you find yourself in need of a mediator.

Although you have a good relationship with your supervisors, your attempts to communicate are not regarded as a priority. You place several phone calls, leaving messages, but your calls go unreturned. Anxious to resolve the situation, you compose a detailed memorandum, clearly stating your coworkers inappropriate behavior and your concerns regarding the inevitable upcoming confrontation. Because sending the memorandum in paper form will delay its receipt for several days, you send it to your supervisors as an e-mail.

Was this the right way to handle this situation? In what ways can sending this e-mail backfire? Would it have been more prudent to continue making attempts at communication with your supervisors regarding the issue through a medium other than e-mail? Considering the characteristics of e-mail such as security and delivery time, explain your response to these questions. Prepare your response as an e-mail to your instructor. NOTE: Please use third person. Do not respond to this prompt in first person (like you are the editor, etc). Evaluate the scenario and write the email, again, in third person.

From Google: "If first person is someone telling you his or her story, and second person is you being told how you should do something, then third person is more like a camera recording events..."