PhD Graduate Guang Ying Mo and Professor Barry Wellman published an article in Information, Communication & Society that examines how "multiple team membership" within organizations affects individual networks, both online and offline. The authors argue that diversity in teams and membership in multiple teams allows for greater development of online networks.
Guang Ying Mo obtained her PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto in 2015. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Ontario Telemedicine Network. Her research focuses on social networks and innovation. Barry Wellman is a retired Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto.
We have posted the citation and the abstract of the article below. The full text is available through the University of Toronto Library Portal here.
Mo, Guang Ying and Barry Wellman. 2016. "The Effects of Multiple Team Membership on Networking Online and Offline: Using Multilevel Multiple Membership Model." Information, Communication & Society, 19(9):1250-1266.
When organizations use multiple team membership (MTM) to enhance efficient use of resources, workers in multiple teams develop networks that expand across team boundaries and are linked to teams at a higher level. On such complexity in multilevel networked organizations, we investigate how MTM and team characteristics shape individual-level networks both online and offline. We explain and use the relatively new approach of multilevel multimember modeling (MMMM) to consider how the diversity of teams is related to individual behaviors and networks. Studying a large trans-Canadian network of scholars making and studying digital media, we find that MTM and diversity in teams have a positive impact on the development of diverse ego networks online (email) rather than offline (in person). We also discuss the broader implications of MMMM for understanding the ways in which networked organizations operate.
Read the full article here.