Collective attention and relational overload: A theory of transactive control in high-permeability intraorganizational environments

Abstract

As rapid organizational and technological change makes boundaries within workplaces more permeable, employees are gaining unprecedented access to new people and information. This both increases opportunities for collaboration and heightens the risk of attention overload. While scholars have investigated overload with respect to “what” employees attend to, little research has examined the challenges concerning “whom” to attend to, resulting in ambiguity that can undermine collaborative relationships. In this paper, we integrate and advance insights from organizational control and selective-attention research, building on those macro- and micro-level theories to better conceptualize collective attention when the potential target is a colleague (human) rather than information (nonhuman)—which we conceptualize as relational attention, i.e., attention-to-whom. Further, we propose a separate, meso-level theory of transactive control of relational attention, building on concepts of transactive behavior from other fields. By exploring how such transactive control works, we begin to define the conditions organizations need to cultivate—regarding mutually transparent availability, synchronous attentional allocation, and reciprocal attentional allocation—to reduce relational overload without sacrificing productive work relationships or other benefits of more permeable internal boundaries. In addition to shedding light on underexamined attention problems in the workplace, this model contributes to future research by forging multi-level connections between individual meta-attention, transactive control over relational attention, and more traditional forms of organizational control.