Effectively understanding and enhancing communication flows among employees within an organizational hierarchy is crucial for optimizing operational and decision-making efficiency. To fill this significant gap in research, we propose a systematic and comprehensive social network analysis approach, coupled with a newly formulated communication vector and matrix, to examine communication behaviors and dynamics in an organizational hierarchy. We use the Enron email dataset, consisting of 619,499 emails, as an illustrative example to bridge the micro-macro divide of organizational communication research. A series of centrality measures are employed to evaluate the influential ability of individual employees, revealing descending influential ability and changing behaviors according to hierarchy. We also uncover that employees tend to communicate within the same functional teams through the identification of community structure and the proposed communication matrix. Furthermore, the emergent dynamics of organizational communication during a crisis are examined through a time-segmented dataset, showcasing the progressive absence of the legal team, the responsibility of top management, and the presence of hierarchy. By considering both individual and organizational perspectives, our work provides a systematic and data-driven approach to understanding how the organizational communication network emerges dynamically from individual communication behaviors within the hierarchy, which has the potential to enhance operational and decision-making efficiency within organizations. • Develop a communication vector and matrix to describe communication patterns. • Uncover latent links between organizational hierarchy and communication network. • Reveal varying communication behavior and importance of employees based on their roles. • Demonstrate the impact of crises on organizational communication dynamics.

Given their limited portfolio of resources, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have to manage information technology (IT) exploitation and exploration at the same time to support a major shift in their product focus while maintaining their current array of products. We theorise that SMEs rely on managerial activities to enable IT ambidexterity to enhance the performance of their new product development (NPD). To this end, we hypothesise and test the relationships between managerial activities, IT ambidexterity, and NPD performance. Using multiple respondent data from 292 high-tech SMEs, we find that managerial activities enable IT ambidexterity, and this relationship is moderated by structural configurations. Considering the NPD management challenges ushered in by the digital era, our findings identify IT ambidexterity as a key mechanism to enhance NPD performance in SMEs. Our results contribute novel insights into the effective role of managerial activities in SMEs and help to explain the role of IT ambidexterity in the NPD literature, thereby facilitating continued theory development in this field of research.

Information systems (IS) projects represent key building blocks of large-scale digital transformation and innovation initiatives. As a result, IS projects have become increasingly ambitious in terms of both goals and scale, making it even more challenging for managers to exercise control over such projects. While prior research focused primarily on the direct and interactive effects of formal and informal control modes on IS project performance, recent research directs attention to the importance of considering project managers’ control styles (i.e., how managers interact with controlees to enact controls). Corresponding studies also indicate that “either/or” control approaches – as opposed to “both/and” approaches – are no longer viable in today’s complex environment. As such, our study draws on an ambidexterity perspective to theoretically develop and empirically test the direct and interactive effects of control-style ambidexterity on IS project performance. Using matched-pair data from 146 IS projects (from 146 high-tech firms), we find that control-style ambidexterity improves project performance – directly and in combination with both formal and informal control. The study results contribute novel insights regarding the effective control of IS projects in the digital era and help explain mixed findings in prior literature, thereby facilitating continued theory development in the research area.