The orchestration of social connections: Examining leader’s brokering behaviors in hybrid workplaces

The diffusion of digital technologies promotes new forms of work that go beyond the dualistic view of work performed either in the office or remotely. An example is hybrid work, which stimulates new, more fluid ways of working in relation to where, how, and when work activities are carried out. Despite the undeniable benefits of this work model, recent studies have shown that long-term digitally mediated communication can negatively impact group cohesion and team spirit. Moreover, research shows that the rise of asynchronous communication in hybrid work environments compromises the formation of relationships based on accessibility and visibility. Furthermore, the fact that employees are less co-located and have fewer synchronous and informal encounters can have consequences in terms of integration of behavior and people. The alteration of hybrid work on workplace social dynamics generates new challenges for leaders who are spurred to reconsider their role in orienting social interaction that previously spontaneously occurred in traditional “in-office” work. The objective of the paper, therefore, is to understand how leaders cultivate interpersonal relationships in the workplace, considering the physical separation and technology-mediated communication that characterize hybrid work arrangements. To address this research question, we relied on the brokering framework as this literature is useful for understanding how individuals facilitate relationships at different levels of organizations and we collected empirical evidence through a qualitative single case study of a company that pioneered the introduction of hybrid working arrangements. After reconstructing the roadmap to implement a hybrid workspace developed by the company and the related challenges pointed out by leaders, the qualitative approach allowed an in-depth analysis of the behaviours activated by leaders, operating in the selected company at different hierarchical levels, to foster relationships with individual team members, with the team as a whole, and among team members in a hybrid context. Through the definition of a fine-grained categorization of behaviours aimed at ensuring the quality of relationships within work teams, this study advances e-leadership and brokering research by conceptualizing hybrid leadership as a multilevel, modality-sensitive relational process. From a managerial perspective, the study invites leaders to explicitly pay attention to the three sets of relational dynamics and deliberately implement specific actions to actively foster social cohesion and interpersonal relationships.