Virtual Collaboration, Organizations, and Networks
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Item Immersive Job Crafting in Production Environments: Development of a Mixed Reality Prototype(2025-01-07) Aptyka, Markus; Anton, Eduard; Hammer, Jonas; Teuteberg, FrankIn an era of globalization and digital transformation, job crafting has become increasingly significant across professional domains. The process of job crafting, involving the proactive optimization of work and process design to liberate resources and reduce demanding workflows, is gaining traction. However, effectively eliciting job crafting is challenging, particularly with dispersed teams and varying levels of familiarity with the concept. This research explores using virtual reality (VR) to facilitate participatory job crafting. By employing design science principles and a human-centered perspective, the study identifies challenges from existing literature and translates them into meta-requirements. These meta-requirements inform the development of design principles, leading to the creation of a VR prototype aimed at enhancing collaborative job crafting. The prototype's efficacy and usability are evaluated through focus groups in two SMEs. The findings highlight the potential of VR-supported job crafting practices and offer valuable insights for future advancements in this domain.Item Employee Proactive Adaptive Behavior during an Abrupt Change: Insights from Knowledge Workers’ Unplanned Adaptation to Digital Collaboration(2025-01-07) Blomqvist, Kirsimarja; Henttonen, Kaisa; Toivikko, Tuuli; Salo, NiinaKnowledge workers’ ability to adapt to change is critical in increasingly dynamic and unpredictable work contexts. Despite abundant research on employee adaptive behavior, scholarly understanding remains scarce about employees’ proactive adaptive behavior during unplanned and abrupt changes caused by external factors. In this paper, we study how knowledge workers adapted to digital collaboration during the Covid-19 crisis, i.e., a situation where change was rapid, unplanned, and even unmanaged. Based on our inductive qualitative study, we identify three types of employee adaptive behavior: reacting, developing, and institutionalizing. We further show that here organizational support and digital support have important and complementary roles in supporting employees’ proactive adaptive behavior.Item Hybrid Leadership as a Balancing Act - Qualitative Insights from a Financial Institution(2025-01-07) Schwehn, Tim-Julian; Meier, Florian J.; Laumer, SvenWe explore the challenges and dynamics of hybrid leadership in organizations transitioning from traditional on-site to hybrid work environments. Using a qualitative single case study approach, we conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with hybrid leaders and employees at a financial institution. Our findings reveal three core paradoxes: ‘change vs. normality’, ‘digital connectivity vs. digital separation’, and ‘trust boosting vs. trust challenging’. These paradoxes highlight the complex balance hybrid leaders must achieve between leveraging technology for efficiency and maintaining interpersonal connections and trust. We propose that hybrid leadership requires new skills and strategies to navigate these tensions effectively. The study contributes to theory and practice by highlighting how the three identified paradoxes impact hybrid work and hybrid leadership. Our findings underscore the importance of adopting both/and approaches to address the presented paradoxes of hybrid leadership in hybrid work.Item Harnessing Technological Support: Amplifying Top-Level Empowering Leadership to Drive Innovation(2025-01-07) Groß, Matthias; Gehlen, JanaThis study examines the moderating effect of technological support on the relationship between top executives' empowering leadership and employees' informational support, and how this relationship drives organizational innovation. Using a SEM bootstrapping approach on a large dyadic leader-employee sample, we show that employee informational support fully mediates the effect of empowering leadership on organizational innovation. Our results show that high levels of technological support significantly strengthen this relationship, underscoring the critical role of a robust technological infrastructure in enhancing leadership effectiveness. These findings challenge the "one-size-fits-all" leadership model and highlight the need to align leadership strategies with technological capabilities. By advocating for stronger leadership in virtual work environments, our study provides actionable insights for fostering innovation, in line with HICSS 2025's focus on the interplay between technology and organizational behavior. This research offers valuable contributions to both academia and practice, emphasizing the strategic integration of technology into leadership approaches.Item Avoiding Loneliness in Digital Work Environments – An Experimental Approach to Analyze the Role of Meeting Accessibility and Participation(2025-01-07) Gleich, Tristan; Schöbel, SofiaThis study investigates how meeting accessibility and social participation influence organizational commitment in virtual offices. While remote work offers benefits like increased flexibility, it also presents challenges such as isolation and lack of social interaction. Physical offices enhance communication and team spirit, which can be weakened in digital environments. Video conferencing tools like Zoom and Teams help but lack spontaneous interactions. Digital offices and immersive technologies aim to mimic physical offices to improve social presence and interaction. However, these solutions are still developing, and organizations face challenges in adopting them. We conducted an experiment that examines the effects of social inclusion and meeting accessibility on ostracism, isolation, and team commitment. Using social presence theory, we explore the relationships between these factors and organizational commitment. The study provides theoretical insights into how different meeting conditions and accessibility can support organizational commitment. Practically, it offers implications for creating digital work environments that better support social interactions among employees.Item The Hyperpersonal Model of Communication in Virtual Meetings: Exploring the Roles of Fatigue, Social Interaction Anxiety, Muting, and Avatar Use in Meeting Engagement(2025-01-07) Lim, Chaeyun; Beyea, David; Leith, Alex; Foxman, Maxwell; Klebig, Brian; Ratan, RabindraVirtual meetings (VMs) are becoming increasingly prevalent in many organizations, yet there is a research gap in understanding the factors influencing virtual meeting engagement (VME). Social interaction anxiety (SIA) interferes with workplace communication and VM Fatigue (VMF) is a common phenomenon among remote workers who rely on VMs for communication. This research investigates the relationships between VME, SIA, and VMF. From the Hyperpersonal Model, we also explore the potential moderating roles of VM features such as avatars, video mute, and audio mute. Our results (N = 976) from the cross-sectional survey indicate that SIA is negatively associated with VME, with VMF partially mediating this relationship. We also found that the negative effect of VMF on VME is moderated and mitigated by audio/video mute feature use. We discuss theoretical implications for future studies, and implications for workplace meeting practices and VM design.Item Constant Connectivity in Global Work: Understanding the Role of Technological, Social and Individual Pressures to Connect(2025-01-07) Van Zoonen, Ward; Gibbs, Jennifer; Sivunen, AnuConstant connectivity is often viewed as an inherent by-product of contemporary workplaces. However, the ways in which connectivity behaviors differ due to individual and contextual differences in global work are not properly understood, which could hamper the coordination and performance of global organizations. Drawing on a sample of global workers (N=976) in a large logistics company, this study examines the role of global work characteristics – i.e., temporal dispersion, geographical dispersion, and national diversity – on three pressures – i.e., technological, social, and individual – that drive constant connectivity. The findings provide a more granular and contextual understanding of the drivers of constant connectivity in global work. We demonstrate that these pressures relate differently to connectivity behaviors across three global regions – i.e., North America, Europe, and Asia.Item Introduction to the Minitrack on Virtual Collaboration, Organizations, and Networks(2025-01-07) Hekkala, Riitta; Nordbäck, Emma; Blomqvist, Kirsimarja; Lasfer, Assia