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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the behaviour response of computer users when either phishing e‐mails or genuine e‐mails arrive in their inbox. The paper describes how this research was conducted and presents and discusses the findings.

This study was a scenario‐based role‐play experiment that involved the development of a web‐based questionnaire that was only accessible by invited participants when they attended a one‐hour, facilitated session in a computer laboratory.

The findings indicate that overall, genuine e‐mails were managed better than phishing e‐mails. However, informed participants managed phishing e‐mails better than not‐informed participants. Other findings show how familiarity with computers, cognitive impulsivity and personality traits affect behavioural responses to both types of e‐mail.

This study does not claim to evaluate actual susceptibility to phishing emails. The subjects were University students and therefore the conclusions are not necessarily representative of the general population of e‐mail users.

The outcomes of this research would assist management in their endeavours to improve computer user behaviour and, as a result, help to mitigate risks to their organisational information systems.

The literature review indicates that this paper addresses a genuine gap in the research.

This work surveys use of e‐mail by Technical Education students in Nigerian universities. Questionnaires were used to collect data from technical education students in three Nigerian universities: University of Benin, Nnamdi Azikiwe University and Delta State University. Data were analysed and presented by gender using frequency counts and percentages. Findings reveal that a majority of the respondents used e‐mail to communicate with parents/relatives and friends, followed by with course mates, a majority of them have e‐mail address with yahoo, use/access e‐mail in cyber cafés, send and receive less than 10 mails per week, prefer e‐mail to postal system and are deterred by slow computer response from use of e‐mail; conclusion was drawn in the light of findings.

The use of electronic mail has grown exponentially in the last five years. When used effectively, it is a very effective messaging and information medium. However, abuse of e‐mail can be a significant risk to a company: increasingly e‐mail figures in defamation and libel cases, and it is often the company, not just the individual sender of the e‐mail, that is held to be responsible and liable. Establishing and ensuring adherence to a policy on the proper use of e‐mail can minimise such risks – and can yield financial savings. This paper sets out the case for establishing an e‐mail policy and presents sample policies and guidelines for the effective use of e‐mail services.

Do you use Electronic mail (E‐mail)? Do you know if anyone other than the intended recipient is reading the mail you send? And, what would you do if it fell into the wrong hands? Employees around the world use E‐mail more than a million times a day (Elmer‐Dewitt, 1993). E‐mail is used for a multitude of purposes including telling jokes, discussing confidential matters, or even spreading gossip that could be potentially offensive if overheard by the wrong person. E‐mail is more convenient for most to use rather than having to pick up the phone or wander down a hall to tell someone something. A common misconception many have concerning the use of E‐mail is that it is as private as mail or a phone call (Elmer‐Dewitt, 1993).

This chapter explores how electronic affective displays may influence individual perceptions, behavior and performance by conducting an exploratory analysis using a sample of real work emails (study 1), along with a laboratory experiment (study 2). The findings from both studies indicate that positive affective displays may have a stronger impact on individual perceptions (study 1) and invoke greater reciprocity from electronic partners (study 2) than negative affective displays. Moreover, some interesting gender effects with respect to affective displays and individual negotiation performance are observed. The implications for the field, along with limitations of the current research, are discussed.

The aim of this study was threefold: to examine companies' e-mail handling performance, to ascertain whether companies' view corporate websites and respond to e-mail requests as mutually exclusive or complementary, and finally to gauge the strategic importance of retail investors.

The findings are based on an analysis of the corporate websites and e-mail handling performance of the 77 smallest companies listed on a South African stock exchange. A “mystery investor” approach was employed to measure companies' e-mail handling performance in terms of responsiveness, timeliness and relevance of responses. A disclosure score was calculated for each company based on a content analysis of corporate websites.

The opportunity for improvement exists, as evidenced in the fact that only 53% of companies responded to an e-mail request from a retail investor. The results suggest that corporate websites and the e-mail functionality are not used in isolation but as complementary. Although the results suggest that companies neglect retail investors, companies that provided a dedicated investor relations (IR) contact address prioritised both their corporate websites aimed to a wide range of stakeholders, as well as responding to an e-mail request received from a retail investor.

This study contributes to research on the association between one-way and two-way communication channels, aimed at retail investors. It is the first study to explore these relationships using data from the smallest companies listed on the stock exchange of an emerging economy.

This paper aims to illustrate how a company's current 24‐hour e‐mail culture impacts on employees' lives outside of their contracted working hours. There are two objectives of the study – first, to calculate the average time spent on work e‐mails by employees per day outside of working hours and, second, to identify what impact e‐mail had on employees' work‐life balance by addressing three research questions. These questions aims to focus on the relationships between: employees' thoughts about company culture and their belief that their work is dependent on them checking their e‐mails outside of working hours; employees' urges to check e‐mails out of working hours and their belief that spending time on e‐mails outside of work means they are neglecting their social life; and employees sending e‐mails out of office hours and their expectation of a quick reply or action.

A case study approach was taken. Employees from a multinational service organisation were invited to complete an online questionnaire and a seven‐day diary so as to collect qualitative and quantitative data about their use of e‐mail.

Data were analysed with respect to respondents' gender, role and length of service in the organisation and discussed with respect to the current literature.

Although the limitations of exploring a single organisation are recognised, it is likely that some of the insights and lessons generated by the study will be transferable to other organisational settings.

This study identified some short‐term recommendations as to how a particular company could limit the negative impact that e‐mails have on its employees' lives outside of contracted working hours. In addition, this study will also raise awareness of the pervasion of work‐related communications into employees' personal lives and, hopefully, trigger further research into the long‐term psychological and sociological effects of a 24/7 communication culture.

There are two novel aspects to this study: the use of diaries as a method of data collection and the notion of exploring e‐mail use “out of hours”.

This research replicates and extends Frey et al. (2003), using a typical e‐mail query to investigate e‐mail customer service by 260 Tunisian hotels. Based on the hotel responses, this study found that guests had one chance in ten of receiving a reply within a day and even less chance that hotels answered the inquiry professionally, promptly, politely and personally. Diffusion of innovations failed to explain differences in responsiveness by Tunisian hoteliers but did help explain the quality of e‐mail replies. The results suggest that reply quality differs across hotel size and hotel affiliation. Hotel affiliation as well as hotel category and website presence showed no significant differences in responsiveness. Differences aside, the results highlight that Tunisian hotels can gain an immediate competitive advantage by analysing common e‐mail queries and implementing basic e‐mail procedures.

This paper details a longitudinal study into the e‐mail habits of first year students at Charles Sturt University. This study is part of ongoing research investigating the factors and barriers that can influence the successfully adoption of technology into the learning environment. The findings from this study illustrate that e‐mail applications are very popular in terms of both useage as well as the high level of confidence that students exhibit. The survey identified two main areas that need to be addressed, namely the disadvantage of rural students in accessing e‐mail and second that male students tend not to be as frequent users of e‐mail compared to their female counterparts.