Zooming in on teaming: Harmony, rhythm and synchronization in hybrid R&D teams
How do people make sense of hybrid work? How do they stay coordinated with teammates and balance their own preferences against what the team needs? What separates teams that thrive under hybrid work from those that struggle?
As companies shift to hybrid work, many are struggling to keep R&D teams tightly coordinated once people stop being in the same room by default. This project studies how engineering teams at a multinational telecom and networking technology company stay in sync, or fall out of it, as they move between office and remote work.
Our case company requires 50% in-office time, yet consistently struggles to get enough people in the building at once, leaving managers worried about how to best do their job. Rather than measuring team performance from the outside, this research follows people working in teams closely over several years — combining interviews with team members and managers and direct observation of team meetings across multiple sites to understand work as it actually happens, day to day.
The goal is practical as much as academic: to give concrete, research-based guidance on what makes hybrid teams succeed — and to help corporate policy, training, and leadership development catch up with how teams really work today, rather than how team-work models, processes, org charts and other formal documents assume they work.
Funding
Supported by Handelsbankens forskningstiftelser.
Researchers
Johathan Schunnesson, Emma Nordbäck, Katja Einola
Contact: katja.einola@hhs.se