The Impact of Brokerage in a Communication Network on Productivity: Evidence from Sensor Data

Problem-solving effectiveness is key to organizational performance. To solve problems, gathering information from colleagues is critical, and positioning brokerage in communication networks is beneficial. The communication network for problem-solving is formed depending on the nature of the problem. Thus, the problem-solving network is the relational event network, and the connection of the problem-solving network dynamically changes over time depending on the problem basis. This study investigates the dynamics of brokerage in a problem-solving network and its impact on productivity in a company that provides technical support and troubleshooting for the IT system that its corporate customers use. By exploiting high-frequency data on face-to-face communication among employees collected by wearable sensors, we established the following results. First, the communication partners of each employee change weekly, which is a reasonable time to solve problems in the company. Second, with the change in the communication network, employees who position brokerage also change on a weekly basis. Third, while brokerage in a week has a positive impact on employee performance during the week, it has no impact on employee performance in the following week.