Navigating Rapport Building and Communications as a Newcomer to an Online Workplace

Preface

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This portfolio presents my research on how a newcomer to an online workplace navigated rapport-building and communication. As a newcomer to my remote internship site, I was intrigued by my experience navigating rapport-building and communication. Most of my data comes from emails between my supervisor and me and some field notes I took during Zoom meetings. The research primarily looked at email conversations to identify the strong and weak rapport-building moments. The findings are expected to serve practitioners - both new and old employees/employers- to better understand virtual rapport-building and communication and ICCers for inspiration for future research. 

Four main components in my portfolio:

1. Home includes a preface that briefly introduces the portfolio and my project.

2. Site includes an introduction of the internship site where I conducted my research, information about its virtual space and my duties, and an organizational chart & sociogram that explains the interpersonal relationships between participants.  

3. Research includes a brief introduction, a literature review that situates my work within ICC, sensitizing concepts that I referred to the study, and examples of critical data and analysis. 

4. Takeaways include findings, implications, and a presentation recording of my work to serve ICCers and practitioners in all industries and fields engaged in online working.

The research questions drive my portfolio:​

1. How does rapport-building happen in an online workplace? How to identify the rapport-building moments?

2. How does online communication affect rapport building when working remotely?

3. How are solid and weak rapport-building reflected in my data?