About

Young Ji Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at UC Santa Barbara. Her research is centered around team collaboration, exploring how team diversity, communication processes, and emerging technologies influence team dynamics and performance. She also investigates the implications of neurodiversity in the workplace. Her work encompasses topics such as collective intelligence, human-machine teaming, boundary work in modern teams, and the role of communication in fostering effective collaboration. Kim received her PhD in communication from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California in 2014, following her MA in communication from USC in 2012 and a B.A. from Yonsei University in 2006. Prior to her current position, she worked as a postdoctoral associate at the Center for Collective Intelligence at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her research has earned her several top paper awards from prominent organizations including the International Communication Association, the National Communication Association, and the Academy of Management. She has also been recognized for her teaching excellence with a university-wide teaching award at USC. Her current research focuses on communication-related factors that contribute to collective intelligence, human-machine interaction and collaboration, boundary work in teams, and neurodiversity in the workplace. Her work on human-machine teaming has been supported by a competitive award from the Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program, which funds her research from 2021 to 2024.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Engineering
• Communication
• Cognitive psychology
• Public relations
• World Wide Web
• Social psychology
• Knowledge management
• Biology
• Systems engineering
• Human–computer interaction

Selected publications

• Correction: Speaking out of turn: How video conferencing reduces vocal synchrony and collective intelligence

  PLoS ONE · 2023-06-23 · 2 citations

  erratumOpen access

  [This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247655.].

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Boundary Work and Transactive Memory Systems in Teams: Moderating Effects of the Visibility Affordance

  Management Communication Quarterly · 2023-07-27 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Individuals in work teams frequently cross boundaries across teams, often by using information and communication technologies (ICTs). The current study investigates the effects of members’ boundary work and the visibility affordance of teams’ ICTs on Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) in teams. Survey data from 212 full-time employees whose work hours were divided between multiple teams reveals that boundary spanning enhances the focal team’s TMS specialization and credibility and negatively influences TMS coordination. Additionally, boundary reinforcement positively affects TMS credibility and coordination. The visibility affordance has a direct positive effect on all three dimensions of TMS and a moderating effect for boundary reinforcement such that higher visibility overrides the positive direct effect of boundary reinforcement on TMS. These findings suggest that different types of boundary work contribute to different dimensions of TMS and that teams might consider prioritizing the use of ICTs with high visibility to enhance their TMS.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Study on the Effect of Immersion Level by Metaverse Concert Function on the Audience's Activeness

  Asia-pacific Journal of Convergent Research Interchange · 2022-11-30

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Metaverse, defined as a digital virtual world, is drawing attention due to the spread of COVID-19. This study defines the functions of metaverse concerts and analyzes their relationship with Generation Z. Metaverse's functions were defined as interaction, self-expression, participatory play, and remote reality, and experiments were conducted on whether the level of concert immersion affects activeness. As a result of the study, the four environments, immersion, and activeness were statistically significant. Although immersion is not mediated by oral intent, it has been shown that it is mediated by the intention to revisit. In other words, the intention by word of mouth is a characteristic of Generation Z, which shares the concert experience itself, and the intention to revisit indicates the need for an experience to increase the level of immersion, and based on this, this study made academic suggestions necessary for metaverse concert research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Group Composition as a Cause, a Consequence, and a Process: A Communication-centered Perspective

  2021-10-13 · 2 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  The characteristics of individual members and how the members are assembled in a group are critical foundations for various group processes and outcomes and often determine important staffing and hiring decisions in organizations. This chapter offers an overview of the history of group composition research across multiple disciplines and identifies three distinct approaches to studying group composition with an emphasis on the role of communication. Scholars treat group composition as a cause that leads to group outcomes, a consequence that results from social and psychological processes, or a process in response to dynamic team environments. A synthesis of previous research reveals that studying group composition as a cause has dominated the field and that the role of communication in group composition has gained little attention. The chapter concludes with a set of future research directions targeting the new digital environment, the role of communication, and research methodologies with special attention to the consequence- and process-oriented approaches.

  PublisherDOI

• Speaking out of turn: How video conferencing reduces vocal synchrony and collective intelligence

  PLoS ONE · 2021 · 79 citations

  • Psychology
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Communication

  Collective intelligence (CI) is the ability of a group to solve a wide range of problems. Synchrony in nonverbal cues is critically important to the development of CI; however, extant findings are mostly based on studies conducted face-to-face. Given how much collaboration takes place via the internet, does nonverbal synchrony still matter and can it be achieved when collaborators are physically separated? Here, we hypothesize and test the effect of nonverbal synchrony on CI that develops through visual and audio cues in physically-separated teammates. We show that, contrary to popular belief, the presence of visual cues surprisingly has no effect on CI; furthermore, teams without visual cues are more successful in synchronizing their vocal cues and speaking turns, and when they do so, they have higher CI. Our findings show that nonverbal synchrony is important in distributed collaboration and call into question the necessity of video support.

  PublisherDOI

• Membership Matters: Organizing Archetypes, Participatory Styles, and Connective Action

  Management Communication Quarterly · 2021 · 3 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  The contemporary communication landscape enables individuals to connect and engage with collective action efforts in multifaceted and ambiguous ways. This complexity makes membership in collective action groups particularly intriguing and important because of its pivotal role as a mechanism that connects individual behavior to group, organizational, and societal dynamics. This study seeks to examine the spread of membership types in the digital environment and explores how different kinds of prompts for collective action are associated with particular types of membership groups. Through a survey of participants on a popular global digital platform for collective decision-making, we found evidence of a broad range of membership types in the digital space, associated with particular prompts calling for action. The results suggest that there is a strong relationship between membership type and participatory styles of individuals. Implications of the results are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Prosodic Synchrony Experiment set up PLoS One 2021 v1

  2020-12-04

  preprintOpen access

  Collective intelligence (CI) is the ability of a group to solve a wide range of problems.Synchrony in nonverbal cues is critically important to the development of CI; however, extant findings are mostly based on studies conducted face-to-face. Given how much collaboration takes place via the internet, does nonverbal synchrony still matter and can be achieved when collaborators are physically separated? Here, we hypothesize and test the effect of nonverbal synchrony on CI that develops through visual and audio cues in physically-separated teammates. We show that, contrary to popular belief, the presence of visual cues surprisingly has no effect on CI; furthermore, teams without visual cues are more successful in synchronizing their vocal cues and speaking turns, and when they do so, they have higher CI. Our findings show that nonverbal synchrony is important in distributed collaboration and calls into question the necessity of video support it.

  PublisherDOI

• Intelligent Machines and Teamwork: Help or Hindrance?

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2020 · 4 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Knowledge management

  Intelligent machines are being deployed as human assistants in a variety of corporate, military, and healthcare settings. Research has generally examined how intelligent machines affect individual human behavior, but very few studies explore how intelligent machines impact teams and teamwork. We examine the performance and processes of teams using an embodied intelligent personal assistant (EIA) to complete a collaborative task. We expected that EIA use would enhance team performance on an intellective task but interfere with the development of a transactive memory system (TMS). A TMS is a collective memory system that, once developed, has strong positive effects on sustained team performance. Our findings show that under some conditions EIA use may be helpful to team performance initially, but harmful to the eventual development of a TMS. We highlight the need for new theorizing about the generative and destructive impacts of intelligent machine use in teams.

  PublisherDOI

• Trade Integration and Business Cycle Synchronization in Latin American Countries

  Journal of Economic Integration · 2020-11-30 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper investigates the relationship between business cycle synchronization and trade integration in the Latin American region. Using data for 17 Latin American countries and the United States (US) from 1980 to 2018, we document the time-series characteristics of business cycle synchronization and intraand inter-regional trade in the region and empirically test whether trade integration contributed to business cycle synchronization. The data demonstrate that the business cycle synchronization index has been steadily increasing in the region. Regional trade integration increased until the financial crisis in 2008 and decreased slightly thereafter. The results of a system generalized method of moments (GMM) regression indicate that bilateral trade with the US significantly increased business cycle synchronization in the region, except during the 2000s, while regional trade had no significant effect. These results emphasize the importance of the indirect trade channel, especially with the US, as a main channel of business cycle synchronization in Latin America.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Empirical Investigation into the Effects of Network Trust and Absorptive Capacity of the North Korean Defectors on Business Performance

  The Korea Entrepreneurship Society · 2019-07-31

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jaehoon Chung

  LG (South Korea)

  17 shared

• Euisik Yoon

  Yonsei University

  9 shared

• Anita Williams Woolley

  Carnegie Mellon University

  9 shared

• Xia Lou

  China University of Petroleum, Beijing

  5 shared

• Tom F. Bersano-Begey

  5 shared

• Il‐Joo Cho

  4 shared

• Atsushi Asakura

  University of Minnesota

  4 shared

• Thomas W. Malone

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• Top Paper Awards from the International Communication Associ…
• Top Paper Awards from the National Communication Association
• Top Paper Awards from the Academy of Management
• University-wide Teaching Award at USC
• Research support from the Department of Defense Multidiscipl…