European doctoral researchers' work communication during the COVID-19 pandemic

The situation caused by coronavirus disease 2019 closures in the spring of 2020 resulted in various restrictions for universities and led to a reorganisation of their operations. This created unprecedented challenges for all academic work. This study aimed to analyse the pandemic-related work experiences of doctoral researchers from several European universities. Thirty-eight doctoral researchers of management and organisation studies wrote voluntarily about their pandemic-related work experiences. The analysis focused on work communication since it emerged as the key theme in the writings. An analytical framework was developed to capture corporeal, virtual, formal, and informal dimensions of work communication in 72 relevant mentions that were extracted from the writings. These mentions created a rich evaluative space in that they evaluated different aspects of work communication. The general finding that all combinations of corporeal, virtual, formal, and informal work communication received both positive and negative evaluations theoretically made sense from a sociomaterial-technological perspective. Doctoral researchers must become immersed in specific sociomaterially and technologically constructed entanglements to achieve their goals of work communication. The findings revealed that these entanglements were both impeding the determinants of work communication as well as enabling researchers to carry out work communication in novel and creative ways.