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Dynamic Silos: Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic

By: Jonathan Larson, Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Neha Parikh Shah, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Fereshteh Amini, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Jeffrey Weston, Christopher White and Carey E. Priebe
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Abstract

Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by Covid-19, work-from-home orders, and the rise of remote work. We analyze aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within over 4000 organizations worldwide to examine changes in network community structures from 2019 through 2020. We find that, during 2020, organizations around the world became more siloed, evidenced by increased modularity. This shift was concurrent with decreased stability, indicating that organizational siloes had less stable membership. We provide initial insights into the implications of these network changes – which we term dynamic silos – for organizational performance and innovation.

Keywords

COVID-19; Remote Work; Organizational Silos; Health Pandemics; Organizations; Communication; Networks

Citation

Larson, Jonathan, Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Neha Parikh Shah, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Fereshteh Amini, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Jeffrey Weston, Christopher White, and Carey E. Priebe. "Dynamic Silos: Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic." arXiv.org (April 1, 2021).
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About The Author

Tiona W. Zuzul

Strategy
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More from the Authors
  • Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic By: Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Jonathan Larson, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Neha Parikh Shah, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Christopher White and Carey E. Priebe
  • Start-up Inertia versus Flexibility: The Role of Founder Identity in a Nascent Industry By: Tiona Zuzul and Mary Tripsas
  • 'Matter Battles': Cognitive Representations, Boundary Objects, and the Failure of Collaboration in Two Smart Cities By: Tiona Zuzul
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