Ubiquitous Online Workspaces and Unsafe Psychological Climate

Building upon the recognized potential of online tools and platforms for fostering collaboration within organizations, contemporary workplaces are increasingly adopting online communities (OCs) as key drivers of learning and knowledge sharing (Hafermalz & Riemer, 2020; Faraj et al., 2016). While for maximizing the effectiveness of these OCs, psychological safety within them needs to be prioritized (Zhang et al., 2010), a critical research gap exists concerning how the inherent online nature of member interactions shapes and influences psychological safety risks. This research gap has been acknowledged by Edmondson & Bransby (2023), who, in their review on psychologically safe climates (PSCs) – state of reduced interpersonal risk – recognize the need for its exploration in remote and hybrid work arrangements considering the impact of remote work. This study aims to address this gap by investigating potential psychological safety risks associated with virtual social dynamics. Our focus is on how the entanglement and/or imbrications of the materiality and the OCs' social subsystem impacts the PSC in these social forms of working. Leveraging the sociomateriality lens (Leonardi, 2013) alongside the four categorizations of factors that shape ‘work experience' proposed by Edmondson & Bransby (2023), we intend to explore if and how the mediated nature of online relationships can potentially contribute to a psychologically unsafe climate within the online workspace. Using this theory as the theoretical lens for this paper offers an understanding of how the interplay of the community's social and material aspects can potentially hinder authentic communication, suppress user engagement, exacerbate stress, and erode inclusivity.