Abstract
The aim of this paper is twofold. One is to criticize typical studies about the Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) based on social psychology and organizational science, and the other is to evoke a new research agenda on this field. Previous studies of CMC have presumed face-to-face situation as desirable for human communication, as its fruitful social cues. However, we cannot equate the usefulness of organizational communication with social cues, because it has to be evaluated in terms of the social purpose of organizational practice itself. In this paper, the author will examine the case of home-office introduced at the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co in 1998. Usually, home-office (or more generally, telework) is regarded as a style of working remotely by imitating face-to-face communication at the physically shared office by CMC. Actually, however, not only do people as home-office working use CMC at remote places, but also entail organizational communication itself (tacit information sharing, newcomer coaching, evaluation of task process, and cultivation of organizationalmoral) for reflection and reconstruction. Now, it is difficult to compare the effect of CMC in the organization with face-to-face situation as an ongoing controversy. New research agenda for CMC in the organization is to seek an alternative possibility of organizational practice itself, along with analyzing reflecting and reconstructing process triggered by adopting CMC.
