Digital small talk: a case study about the construction of organiza-tional identity through informal communication during remote work

Abstract: Organizations have gone through difficult times during the pandemic trying to adapt to new working conditions that restrict face-to-face encounters for their employees. The development of day-to-day tasks have been modified to cope with the virtual conditions of teleworking. Furthermore, the interactions between coworkers have been limited to virtual encounters, which has had a great impact on the activities and informal communication processes that are part of daily work life. Thus, this study has sought to investigate the informal practice of small talk during these circumstances of remote work and its impact on the construction of organizational identity. For this, the interviews with Malmö Stad employees pro-vided relevant perceptions of identity construction based on digital small talk. The results showed that the dynamics of small talk in virtual contexts have been influenced by the characteristics of the media in which they are developed, and in turn, this has impacted the construction of identity of employees in relation to their work teams, their work unit, and the organization.