As noted in the article by Townsend et al (2008), virtual communication has become increasingly popular in firms wishing to save costs on sending their employees to face-to-face meetings. Although face-to-face meetings have been the traditional way to conduct business for time immemorial, the rise of the manager and the large corporation means that the old 'spit in the handshake' is no longer the preferred method of cutting a deal in the realm of global transactions. What is preferred is cutting costs and shifting the savings into the accounts of the shareholders. Therefore, savvy firms have invested significant capital in developing virtual communications platforms for their employees and contractors. A review of the pros and cons of virtual and real-time communications richly repays examination.
Virtual communications take place on computers, PDAs, cell phones, pagers, and dedicated audio- and video-conference channels. There are special "Netiquette" behaviors which are customarily observed in virtual communications, such as refraining from typing in ALL CAPS, not using excessive profanity, spell checking, and labeling the subject of the message. Since a virtual communication may be composed solely of a string of text, that text needs to contain all the pertinent information intended for the message receiver since facial expressions, body language, and general social cues are not available as in face-to-face communications. In this way, virtual communication is nuanced in a way that face-to-face communication is not. In virtual communications, complications arise when the receiver of a message attempts to infer from the context. When one party finds itself inferring in a virtual communication, the potential for an erroneous interpretation is high. Inference in a virtual communication is an indication that the message sender has codified the message poorly. Inference is a poor strategy because it attempts to find me...