Communication competence factors as moderators to the relationship between user participation and information quality

Communicative Skills:
Communicative skills deal
with knowledge of how one delivers his/her knowledge in
an appropriate and effective way. Communicative skills
include the interactant’s ability to perceive and interpret
facets of any situation [11]. Moreover, a skillful
communicator should “be capable of monitoring the
progress of an interaction” and “able to engage in a
reflective process immediately following one interaction”
[9]. In the user participation literature, few studies
addressed the communication skills of those interacting
during participation. One of the few studies was done by
Yoon, Guimaraes, and O’Neal [42]. They investigated
factors associated with expert systems and found that
quality of domain experts was a predictor of user
satisfaction. The quality of domain experts was measured
by asking project managers to rate their experts on
cooperation, 
availability, 
computers 
background,
education level and work experience, and communication
skills. Communication skills was treated as a part of the
quality of domain experts construct, and its direct effect
on expert system success was not tested. Although it has
been realized that communications between users and
developers are important, users’ communicative skills that
facilitate 
effective 
communications 
have 
been
inadequately investigated.
Motivation to Communicate:
Spitzberg [36]
posited that motivation is an important element of
communication competence, because without it, though
one may possess the necessary knowledge and
communication skills, he/she may be reluctant to
communicate with others. Some researchers associated
motivation or 
willingness to communicate 
with
personality traits, while others thought it was more related
to situational variables [27]. In the user participation
context, although few studies have been done on the
motivation to communicate, a few researchers have
expressed their concerns on ineffective communications
caused by users’ inhibition to share knowledge [5, 13].
From their case study, Gallivan and Keil [13] suggested
that “Project managers should try to ensure that users feel
empowered to share their ideas freely and should
recognize the greater risks that accompany situations in
which users are reluctant to share their opinions. [italics
added]” They further observed that future researchers
should find out the antecedents to open communication
between users and system developers.
An important factor that influences motivation to
communication is communication apprehension, defined
as “an individual’s level of fear or anxiety associated with
either real of anticipated communication with another
person or persons” [25]. Past research found that
communication apprehension had a strong negative
impact 
on 
the 
communicator’s 
willingness 
to
communicate [24]. McCroskey and Richmond [27]
posited that communication apprehension was probably
the single best predictor of willingness to communicate.
In the user participation literature, it has been
observed that communication barriers should be removed
to facilitate user participation. However, no studies have
been found investigating the effects of 
users’
communication apprehension.
The next section presents the proposed model,
the hypotheses, and elaborates on the effects of these
moderator variables on the relationship between user