- The study has one problem: it is based on user perceptions, not actual productivity measures. IMO, perception of IM is skewed to the positive by getting answers fast, which will boost your productivity at the cost of someone else’s.

- IM is interruptive. Plenty of studies show that.

- The difference versus walk-ups is that there is more control over timing and duration.
Also, multitasking conversations is possible, at the cost of deeper interruptiveness.

- The difference between modern email clients and modern IM clients as far as productivity is concerned is minimal. Both are about as interruptive. Lots of people reduce the “interruptiveness” of IM clients by making them more “emailish”, such as disabling alert mechanisms. Vice versa, people make email clients more “IM-ish” sometimes, such as POPing for email every three minutes in Outlook 2003, with the slider turned on.

I think that IM has a place in the workplace, but only if it is properly addressed with staff.

IMO, the nutshell version is that IM is useful for supporting live, collaborative, interactive and/or real-time work, but bad for anything else in the workplace. (And, all types of interruptions should be minimized!) For example, it’s good for meeting replacements, brainstorming sessions (if your IM supports more interactive whiteboards or video), inetractive project work, etc. Especially if it helps control loss of time due to travel, room setup, etc. It’s bad when you are in the middle of understanding/sorting/collating a big data report, etc.

The other statement was an attempt at humor that fell flat. :)