Megan Chan, Dorothy Carter, Leslie DeChurch, and Noshir Contractor
Manuscript under review; please contact Megan for a working draft
Abstract: Teams that synchronize through short, intense “bursts” of communication tend to achieve high levels of collective attention—a state of coordinated, high-quality shared focus that is associated with effective team performance. In hybrid contexts, however, these bursty communication patterns are frequently disrupted by competing demands from both virtual and in-person contexts. Team members may attempt to compensate by engaging in multicommunication—that is, participating in multiple conversations simultaneously across different channels. While increasingly common, the implications of multicommunication for team functioning and attentional dynamics remain poorly understood. In some cases, organizational practices might even incentivize multitasking behaviors that fragment attention and impair collaboration. This study draws upon media synchronicity theory to investigate how bursty communication and multicommunication influence collective attention in hybrid teams. Using dynamic network analysis, we examine 11,308 communication events drawn from a controlled experiment involving hybrid teams working on a complex task over the course of eight months. Our findings reveal that although multicommunication can be distracting locally—diminishing attention among those directly engaged in simultaneous messaging—certain patterns, such as alternately sending and receiving messages across channels, are positively associated with group-level collective attention. In contrast, simultaneous sending and receiving is consistently linked to decreased collective attention both locally and globally, suggesting an upper bound to the benefits of multicommunication. These results highlight the nuanced role of communication patterns in shaping attention dynamics. Hybrid teams that use multicommunication judiciously, balancing speed, synchronicity, and cognitive load, may be better positioned to maintain collective attention and achieve coordinated performance.
Related work:
Chan, M., DeChurch, L., Contractor, N. (2025, Jul 25-29). Closing the Loop: Multicommunicating in Multiteam Systems. [Conference Presentation]. Academy of Management, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Research supported by NASA awards NNX15AM32G, 80NSSC18K0221, and 80NSSC18K0276
Megan Chan 