Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by Covid-19, work-from-home orders, and the rise of
\nremote work. We analyze aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within over 4000 organizations
\nworldwide to examine changes in network community structures from 2019 through 2020. We find that, during 2020,
\norganizations around the world became more siloed, evidenced by increased modularity. This shift was concurrent with
\ndecreased stability, indicating that organizational siloes had less stable membership. We provide initial insights into the
\nimplications of these network changes \u2013 which we term dynamic silos \u2013 for organizational performance and innovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by Covid-19, work-from-home orders, and the rise of remote work. We analyze aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within over 4000 organizations worldwide to examine changes in network community structures from 2019 through 2020. We find that, during 2020, organizations around the world became more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"Management Science","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2025-4-1","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":null,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556],"msr-publication-type":[193715],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[254989],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-738628","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-locale-en_us","msr-field-of-study-graph-analytics"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2025-4-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"Management Science","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/pubsonline.informs.org\/doi\/full\/10.1287\/mnsc.2022.02797","label_id":"243109","label":0},{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/2104.00641.pdf","label_id":"252679","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Tiona Zuzul","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Emily Cox Pahnke","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Jonathan Larson","user_id":32385,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Jonathan Larson"},{"type":"text","value":"Patrick Bourke","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Nicholas Caurvina","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Neha Parikh Shah","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Fereshteh Amini","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Jeffrey Weston","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Youngser Park","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Joshua Vogelstein","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Chris White","user_id":31442,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Chris White"},{"type":"text","value":"Carey E. Priebe","user_id":0,"rest_url":false}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[669339,901101,916890],"msr_project":[918261,912408],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"article","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":918261,"post_title":"Work & well-being","post_name":"work-well-being","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2023-10-25 20:54:47","post_modified":"2023-10-25 20:54:50","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/work-well-being\/","post_excerpt":"The COVID-19 pandemic changed the lives of people around the world at home and at work, with effects lasting beyond the lockdowns. Along with Microsoft\u2019s New Future of Work Report 2022, this research looks at the impact of remote work on the personal productivity and well-being of Microsoft\u2019s own employees, the effects of remote work on cross-group collaboration, how working from home affects work relationships, how the pandemic has affected farmers and farmworkers and exploring…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/918261"}]}},{"ID":912408,"post_title":"Graph AI for organizational analytics","post_name":"graph-ai-for-organizational-analytics","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2023-01-12 17:14:14","post_modified":"2026-02-05 06:35:49","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/graph-ai-for-organizational-analytics\/","post_excerpt":"New advances in graph machine learning paired with telemetry unlock a disruptive new ability to measure and reason about how organizations function. The modern workplace has changed the way collaborative work is performed. With the shift to remote and hybrid work, more communications between people moved from conference rooms to digital platforms. Using these aggregated signals from these digital platforms, we can create and deploy new technologies to drive better understanding as to how teams…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/912408"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/738628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/738628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145814,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/738628\/revisions\/1145814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publisher?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=738628"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=738628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}