A Semi Markov Decision Process Approach To E-mail Management In A Knowledge Work Environment

Growing dependence on knowledge workers has made it not only desirable but also imperative that research be dedicated to modeling and improving the performance of this new kind of 'worker'. The degree to which the capacities of this new breed of workers are used to increase the cooperative effectiveness of the enterprise depends on understanding how well the enabling technologies can mesh with organizational priorities and outcomes. With growing acceptance of e-mail as the de facto medium of communication, managing a knowledge worker's time between e-mail processing and his regular duties has emerged as a challenge to enterprises. In this paper we propose to use a variant of MDP known as the Semi Markov Decision Process to model and generate strategies to effectively handle a knowledge worker's time between e-mail processing and his other regular duties.