Doom and Zoom: How the Tsunami of Distractions from the Rapid Collision of Home and Work Floods Video Call Interactions

The world flipped to remote work overnight with the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, current literature on the pandemic video call work environment is limited and is mainly trade articles. Previous literature used many terms, with one term per study, to evaluate deliberate behaviors where one engaged in an unrelated task with or without a conversation partner. Therefore, this study identified "divided presence" as the umbrella term to aggregate these behaviors. At this point, divided presence is defined as one's deliberate behavioral choice to divide one's presence between a live conversation partner and at least one other unrelated task simultaneously. This narrative study examined how 21 pharmaceutical or biotechnology professionals who worked remotely at least two days per week and experienced receiving divided presence from colleagues on work video calls in the COVID-19 remote work environment made sense of this experience. This research used real-life scenarios in video calls with 3 participants per call and a follow-up survey to validate themes. Psychological meaningfulness, safety, and availability served as this study's theoretical framework. Ten themes emerged across the call groupings. Findings suggest that when participants received divided presence, they experienced negative, empathetic, and variable emotional impact. The nature of the colleague relationship and the unrelated task were potential mitigating or compounding factors. Power dynamics had an impact and, repeat engagers in divided presence were detrimental to working relationships. Lastly, poorly organized meetings increased undesirable impact from a participant's receiving and propensity to engage in divided presence. This study's findings validated pre-COVID-19 literature, showed that the theoretical framework still works today, and provided challenges to literature with siloed lenses. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]