Voice mail is a computer-aided telephone system which is capable of storing and forwarding spoken messages. The voice mail market has been and is still focused on larger companies since they comprise a sizable amount of the installed base of voice processing systems (Radisich, 1994). Consequently, all voice mail research has been centered on the large company and concentrates on advantages or disadvantages found in these substantial companies.This study focused on the implementation and diffusion of a relatively new communication technology and its consequences in an unresearched arena--the small company. Also a comparatively new methodology in the field of communications research, grounded theory, was used to explore the impact of a new technology, thus possibly advancing the credibility of this research methodology.The results of this pilot study on voice mail in a small company found diffusion to be extremely successful, even to the point of surprising some of the subjects with their total acceptance of the technology.The study results indicated that the small company can benefit from voice mail usage in similar ways to the large company, especially if the company has travelers or off-site locations. The results implied that there are some ways that voice mail can assist in the small company where it has not previously had a reported effect in the large company---as a negotiating, organizing, and delegating tool.The results of the study could provide insights for other small companies concerned with successful usage of the voice mail technology in similar environments. Several concepts on novel uses of voice mail surfaced as a result of this study. These concepts could provide hypothesis for empirical testing to further voice mail investigation.The study concluded that voice mail is a communication technology that is an accepted and beneficial tool which offered several major advantages that the subject small company was able to successfully utilize. / Department of Journalism