Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 117
New platform. Old context gap.
A channel becomes more useful when people learn its conventions the topic the organization and one another
Premise
A communication channel does not feel equally capable to every user. Email or messaging may seem sparse and ambiguous to a newcomer yet precise and expressive to colleagues who share vocabulary, routines, and history. Judging the technology alone can therefore confuse an experience deficit with a technical limitation.
John R. Carlson and Robert W. Zmud developed Channel Expansion Theory to explain this variation. Their central claim is that perceived media richness grows through knowledge-building experience. The channel does not physically change. Users become better able to encode and interpret meaning through it. For executives, this turns channel assessment into a diagnosis of both affordances and learned context.
What the model is: Channel Expansion Theory in Knowledge →
Continue in the series
- The essential model
- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryTheories & Explanatory Models
- DomainOrganization & Structure
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Theories & Explanatory Models
Explains how or why a communication process works by relating mechanisms, conditions or variables. Its value is an account that can guide inquiry into what produces an outcome, rather than a name for the outcome alone.