The effects of COVID‐19 on information management in remote and hybrid work environments

This empirical research examines the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic on information management (IM) in remote or hybrid work. We present an in‐depth statistical analysis of 716 responses to questionnaires received from employees and managers of four Israeli government ministries. The participants were asked to report characteristics such as accessibility, retrieval speed, ease of locating, and relevance of information, in order to assess the quality of organizational IM before and during COVID‐19. The findings reveal that IM quality was maintained even when organizations were forced to quickly adapt to working remotely during the pandemic. Regardless of work location, differences in perception of IM were found among organizations of different sizes: large, medium, and small. The majority of respondents who reported not using IM systems (IMS) before COVID‐19 also stated that even after the pandemic's onset, they still did not use them. A lower frequency of IMS use has been associated with a decline in IM quality. Given the far‐reaching changes in IM induced by the pandemic, many of which have the potential to be long‐lasting, these findings serve as an opening for valuable future research.


| INTRODUCTION
Following the explosive spread of the novel coronavirus in late 2019 and early 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic in March 2020. To curb the pandemic's spread, governments around the world implemented measures limiting the movement of their population (Richter, 2020). The drastic steps taken to protect public health led to new crises in many other areas, such as economic, financial, and educational systems (Bratianu, 2020). Furthermore, the consequences of the pandemic adversely affected many businesses worldwide, even threatening their ability to survive (Abubakar, 2020).
This "new normal" forced society as a whole and work organizations in particular to adapt quickly, especially in the field of information management (IM) (Barnes, 2020). Organizations made a sudden and massive transition to virtual work to enable employment while satisfying the new rules for physical distancing (APQC, 2020c). Flexible employment strategies were adopted by many private and public organizations in both local and global markets. This included the hybrid model, which incorporated employment both from the office and home (Yang et al., 2021). Given these significant workplace changes, digital work tools and virtual communication platforms were in high demand (APQC, 2020c). Focus shifted towards the role technology plays in the workplace (Carroll & Conboy, 2020), as well as the ways IM could facilitate innovative employment models (APQC, 2021).

| STUDY PURPOSE STATEMENT
Research in IM can contribute many important findings relevant to society post-COVID-19, including in areas such as employment, organizations, and economics (Barnes, 2020). During the pandemic, IM studies focused largely on managing pandemic-related health information and its dissemination to the public (see, e.g., Kosack et al., 2021). Other scholars focused on IM systems (IMS) development aimed at overcoming the difficulties presented by the worldwide pandemic (e.g., He et al., 2021). Researchers call for expanding study to include the impact of the pandemic on businesses (e.g., Abubakar, 2020). O'Leary (2020) recommended that information and technology systems researchers investigate central issues arising in the context of COVID-19, including the evolving work environment, virtual communication tools, and system development. Specifically in Israel, previous research examined how government information is managed, disseminated and transmitted to Israeli citizens at the national level (Yavetz & Aharony, 2020. However, to the best of our knowledge, no research exists that empirically examines perceptions of IM quality within organizations themselves, or in relation to remote and hybrid work.
This study seeks to shed light on various aspects related to IM in relation to COVID-19 and its effects on working modalities. Employees' and managers' perceptions on IM in their organizations were examined through questions concerning qualities such as documentation, sharing, storage, accessibility, retrieval, relevance, completeness, and updated information. While adopting a managerial-strategic perspective, this study investigates the wide-ranging implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on IM in the employment models characterizing the "new normal"; fully remote work or hybrid work.
This study focuses on four government ministries of varying sizes operating in Israel. Pre-COVID-19, working outside the office was not common in Israel, certainly not in the unique organizational culture of the public sector. Considering this, the pandemic led to drastic structural changes in work methods. This study examines work location and organization size to determine whether, according to participants' perceptions, IM quality improved or declined as a result of COVID-19, or perhaps remained unchanged. In addition, our study examines the changes in the reporting of the frequency of IMS use before and during COVID-19.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 3 consolidates the literature. Section 4 describes the research questions and hypotheses. Section 5 details the procedures, followed by the results in section 6 and discussion in section 7. Section 8 presents the both the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. Finally, section 9 concludes the paper with potential areas for future research.

| The COVID-19 outbreak and changes in organizations
The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic were far-reaching, leaving no company, organization, or individual unaffected (Carroll & Conboy, 2020). Many governments imposed long periods of lockdown to flatten the epidemiological curve and control health crises (Bratianu, 2020). Policies to restrict the physical movement of populations and avoid close human contact had unprecedented effects on the world of work (Carroll & Conboy, 2020;Dwivedi et al., 2020). The pandemic led to a temporary standstill of routine business activities, forcing many companies to close or drastically limit operations (Dwivedi et al., 2020). The requirements of social distancing meant organizations that continued to operate had to change processes, practices, and work patterns (Leidner, 2020;Richter, 2020). To cope with the "new normal," managers had to constantly rethink their business models, with very limited time to consider the long-term effects of the changes introduced (Carroll & Conboy, 2020;Dwivedi et al., 2020). 3.2 | Remote or hybrid work in the "new normal" COVID-19 accelerated the transition from a traditional office workplace to working from home (Yang et al., 2021). Employees in a wide range of industries were required to quickly adjust their work procedures and conduct virtual meetings for the first time. Full or integrated (partial) remote work became an essential part of how work was completed (Barnes, 2020;Carroll & Conboy, 2020). Accordingly, digital platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams were widely adopted by organizations; over time, employees came to recognize their advantages (Barnes, 2020;Dwivedi et al., 2020;Richter, 2020). The global pandemic encouraged technology-mediated communication and greatly reduced face-to-face interaction in the workplace (Barrero et al., 2021). According to Yang et al. (2021), the transition to working from home caused a decline in synchronous communication, such as timed meetings and audio or video calls, and contributed to an increase in asynchronous communication, such as emails and instant messaging. The hybrid employment format, which allows employees to divide their time between office and home, is being considered as an optimal practice even after the resolution of the pandemic (Guyot & Sawhill, 2020).

| Remote work in Israel during the pandemic
The series of restrictions imposed by the Israeli government due to the outbreak of the pandemic led to a sharp increase in unemployment, a significant decrease in operations of many industries, and a steep drop in revenue. Remote work in Israel pre-COVID-19 existed primarily in the private sector on a voluntary basis, involving only 4.4% of the workforce (Benita, 2020;Flug et al., 2021). A survey of a representative sample of the working population in Israel revealed that prior to the pandemic, the proportion of those who responded that they worked from home "sometimes" was 9%. This percentage increased significantly to 55% during the first lockdown in Israel at the end of March 2020. Following the easing of some restrictions in July 2020, the proportion of Israelis employed remotely dropped to 43%. A similar rate was found just as the Israeli economy entered the third lockdown in December 2020 (Aviram-Nitzan & Zaken, 2021).

| Public sector employees in Israel
COVID-19 showcased the resilience of the public sector in responding to emergencies (Mazzucato & Kattel, 2020). In Israel, employees in this sector comprise approximately one-third of the workforce. Prior to COVID-19, remote work for public sector workers in Israel was almost nonexistent (Benita, 2020). Following the outbreak of the pandemic, essential workers in the public sector were given the opportunity to work remotely (Prime Minister's Office, 2020). Indeed, the percentage of Israeli public sector employees working remotely partially or in full had jumped to 33% in July 2020 and 38% in December of the same year (Aviram-Nitzan & Zaken, 2021). A government report determined that the widespread implementation of remote work arrangements among employees of the entire public sector has the potential to increase the gross domestic product in Israel by up to NIS 850 million per year. Therefore, it recommended promoting a national plan to encourage such measures (Benita, 2020). A recent control report of the Civil Service Commission (2023) revealed that even after the end of the emergency period, about 30% of the civil service employees in Israel work remotely as a routine.

| The importance of IM in information-intensive organizations
The strategic role of information in supporting business processes has a significant impact on operational performance (Nakash & Bouhnik, 2021). Managers are periodically forced to deal with information that may be incomplete, imprecise, uncertain, unreliable, vague, or partially true (Dwivedi et al., 2020). Information is one of the most essential resources for solving problems and making decisions that may affect the future. Therefore, practitioners and academics are devoting increasing resources to understanding the practices for its management (Opoku, 2015). IM is designed "to support the acquisition, processing, reporting and distribution [of] information within an organization" (Burita, 2018, p. 58). An extensive review of research in this field revealed that the main challenges facing IM activities in information-intensive organizations are a lack of funds, human resources, infrastructure, and managerial support (Opoku, 2015). In an era of digital and even global communication, information technologies (IT) constitute a powerful and important tool. Indeed, employees have come to increasingly expect the existence of sophisticated automated work environments (Nakash & Bouhnik, 2022).
3.6 | Organizational IM and the COVID-19 outbreak IM procedures are critical to ensuring stability during crises, especially when working remotely (Al-Habaibeh et al., 2021). During COVID-19 in Israel, maintaining organizational information was found to be a major challenge for organizations (Stolero, 2020). A central part of successfully changing how work was conducted during the outbreak of the pandemic was IM and IMS (Dwivedi et al., 2020). The accelerated transition to working with a minimum of physical interaction was enabled by the widespread use of IT and communication infrastructure (Ågerfalk et al., 2020). Technologydriven solutions enabled sufficient communication of critical information at all levels of an organization (Sanders et al., 2020). IT played a key role in how organizations conducted business in the "new normal" (O'Leary, 2020) and made possible effective remote work (Leidner, 2020). Due to the widespread adoption of digital tools providing access to organizational applications and systems (Dwivedi et al., 2020), employees' digital proficiency also improved significantly in a short time (Richter, 2020).

| RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES
In the current article, we focus on an empirical examination of two key variables related to IM in information-intensive organizations: IM quality, and frequency of IMS use. The perception of IM quality in the organization is based on a set of elements: level of information documentation and accessibility; ease and speed of information retrieval; the currency, completeness and relevance of the information; and the degree of information sharing between co-workers. The perception of the frequency of IMS use is based on the number of times the employee accesses those systems over time. Given the above, the questions we wanted to answer were as follows: RQ1. In the respondents' perception, during COVID-19 did the IM quality improve, decline, or remain unchanged with reference to the work location?
RQ2. In the respondents' perception, during COVID-19 did the IM quality improve, decline, or remain unchanged in organizations of different sizes?
RQ3a. Is there a difference in the frequency of reported IMS use before and after the COVID-19 outbreak? If so, how?
RQ3b. Did the frequency of IMS use affect the IM quality upon the outbreak of COVID-19? If so, how?
Based on the theoretical and conceptual background and considering the initial findings obtained from the control group, the following hypotheses were formulated: Hypothesis H1. Those respondents who worked in fully remote work or hybrid work will report that they perceived a decline in IM quality during COVID-19. However, those who continued working from the office throughout the pandemic will report that IM quality was maintained (i.e., experienced no significant change).
Hypothesis H2. The smaller the organization, the more likely respondents will tend to estimate that IM quality declined during COVID-19.
Hypothesis H3a. More respondents will tend to report that, following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, their frequency of IMS use in organizations increased.
Hypothesis H3b. The more reports made of an increase in frequency of organizational IMS use during COVID-19, the higher quality IM will be reported as well.

| Research design
Our study focuses on organizations in the Israeli public sector, in keeping with our goal of studying informationintensive organizations. For years, this sector engaged in traditional office work and experienced major changes in work location and methods following the outbreak of the pandemic (as noted above in section 3.4). Queir os et al.
(2017) find that the questionnaire possesses several strengths as a data collection tool with potentially high representation and low cost. Survey research is a popular method of collecting large-scale and statistically significant data, when directly examining the population would be difficult because of its size (Mohajan, 2020). As such, we constructed a research questionnaire measuring respondents' perceptions of IM quality and frequency of IMS use in their organizations before and during COVID-19, and distributed this questionnaire to several Israeli government organizations of varying size. The study was conducted during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, between May 2020 and March 2021.

| Data collection and analysis
Participants were asked to report their perception of IM quality and frequency of IMS use in their organizations during two separate periods: the period prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel (Part I), and the period from the outbreak in Israel until the completion of the questionnaire (Part II). The questionnaires included closed questions and statements graded on a Likert scale (a 6-point scale from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree) or 6 (unknown/irrelevant)).
Dependent variables included various aspects of organizational IM and processes for the creation and consumption of information. IM was defined as being high quality if it was reported that organizational information was fully documented, accessible, easy and quick to retrieve, high quality (up-to-date, complete, and relevant), and shared between co-workers. The respondents were also asked to report the extent of their use of IMS, including digital document management tools, regulation and procedures systems, collaborative technology tools, and so forth. Independent variables include respondents' demographic information, the size of the organization they belonged to, current work location, etc.
The questionnaire (see Appendix) was completed by 31 members of a control group and passed a credibility test by a certified statistician. This group was made up of employees and managers from an information-intensive organization in the public sector in Israel. The group's members were of different genders, various ages, and held different positions. Furthermore, we verified that the control group would accurately reflect the variety of employment models and differences in organizational seniority included in our study. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the questionnaire was 0.78.
Data collection was approved by the Civil Service Commission in Israel and was completely anonymous, in order to maintain strict confidentiality. The questionnaire was distributed via email to thousands of government employees in four ministries located in Israel. All offices belong to the public sector, have similar organizational cultures, and, for at least part of the pandemic, adopted flexible employment formats. Participation in this study was voluntary and participants were not compensated. After processing, responses were analyzed systematically using standard statistical models with SPSS software.

| Sample
The sampled population is information-intensive organizations in Israel. Specifically, the sample was four government ministries that were part of the Israeli public sector. The final sample consisted of 716 government employee responses: 407 were collected from a large organization of over 5000 employees (56.84%), 146 from a medium sized organization of 1000-5000 employees (20.39%), and 163 from two small organizations of under 1000 employees (22.77%). In terms of characteristics, 338 respondents were male (47.21%), and 378 were female (52.79%). At that time, 335 questionnaires were collected from those working in the office (46.78%); 381 were collected from those working remotely (53.22%), divided between fully remote work (n = 64, 8.93%) and hybrid work (n = 317, 44.27%). Of the respondents, 58.24% were professionals or administrative employees (n = 417), while 41.76% were managers at the middle or senior management level (n = 299). Most respondents had over 10 years of seniority in their respective organizations (n = 442, 61.73%), while a small minority were employed in their organization for up to 1 year only (n = 19, 2.66%). The largest age group was 41-50 (n = 226, 31.56%). See Table 1 for the detailed dispersion. 6 | RESULTS

| Work location and IM quality
We conducted a repeated measures ANOVA analysis to examine the influence of work location on the perception of IM quality. The results indicated a significant interaction effect, F(2,705) = 2.83, p = 0.05. Follow-up analysis of the interaction revealed that while a decline in IM quality was reported among those working mostly from the office at the time of the survey (t (331) = 2.02, p = 0.04), those working in a hybrid environment reported that the IM quality did not change significantly (t (311) = À0.02, p = n.s.). An upward trend is detectable in the perception of IM quality among respondents working fully remotely, although this trend was not found to be significant (t (63) = À1.40, p = n.s.) (see Figure 1).

| Organization size and IM quality
We conducted a repeated measures ANOVA analysis to examine the influence of organization size on the perception of IM quality. The results indicated a significant interaction effect, F(2,705) = 3.22, p = 0.04. Follow-up analysis of the interaction revealed that while an improvement of IM quality was reported in medium-sized organizations (t (144) = 1.96, p = 0.04), a decline was reported in small organizations (t (161) = 2.23, p = 0.02). In large organizations, no significant difference was found in the perception of IM quality compared to the pre-COVID-19 period (t (400) = 0.52, p = n.s.) (see Figure 2).

| Differences in IMS use
We conducted a chi-square test to examine changes in the perception of frequency of IMS use before and during COVID-19. The analysis showed a significant correlation (Cramer's V = 0.535, p < 0.001). We find that 55.3% of respondents who stated that they did not use the organization's IMS before the pandemic stated that this did not change during the pandemic. Respondents who stated that before the pandemic they did not use IMS at all (10.6%) or only sparingly (15.7%), reported that during COVID-19 they used the systems more than once a day (see Table 2).

| Frequency of IMS use and IM quality
We conducted one-way ANOVA analysis to examine the influence of the perception of frequency of IMS use on the perception of IM quality. The results indicated a significant effect, F (2,705) = 3.05, p = 0.04. Follow-up analysis revealed that those who reported an increase in the frequency of organizational IMS use during the COVID-19 pandemic also reported an improvement in IM quality (M = 0.046, SD = 0.41). In contrast, respondents who stated that there was a decline in their frequency of IMS use during the pandemic, also reported a decline in the IM quality (M = À0.80, SD = 0.40, p = 0.02) (see Figure 3).

| DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world put in place drastic restrictions on their population's movement, work and more. Remote work became an important and essential tool for the continued function of the economy, especially among professional or managerial workers (Benita, 2020). Given the possibility of another wave of infection or pandemic, this method of work is increasingly being accepted as legitimate as part of the "new normal" (Barnes, 2020;Carroll & Conboy, 2020). Specifically in the public sector in Israel, this option is being considered as a practice which can dramatically increase the public good (Benita, 2020). It seems that the COVID-19 crisis has practically accelerated the examination of flexible employment models which were not previously practiced among government office employees in this country (Ministry of Finance, 2022).
The abrupt change in working location and methods during the COVID-19 pandemic away from traditional office-based work had the potential to negatively impact employee morale and engagement. A decline in informal encounters with co-workers in corridors or coffee corners that was observed was a natural consequence of these changes (Nakash & Bouhnik, 2023). Casual encounters constitute spontaneous interpersonal social interactions and can encourage effective information exchange (APQC, 2020a; APQC, 2020b; Naaman, 2022). Of the various employment sectors in Israel, the level of pre-COVID-19 preparedness among public sector workers was assessed to be the lowest (Stolero, 2020). Indeed, upon the pandemic outbreak in Israel, government ministries reported a shortage of approximately 2500 portable computers necessary to enable remote work to continue (State Comptroller, 2021). Therefore, in our Hypothesis H1 we expected that out-of-office workers would be more inclined to report a decline in IM quality. However, no significant difference was found in the perception of IM quality among those who worked remotely or in a hybrid environment. Respondents reported, contrary to our expectations, that IM quality was maintained even when organizations were forced to allow work outside the physical boundaries of the office. These responses seem to indicate that employees adapted to work practices for information creation and consumption processes consistent with the changing employment paradigm. Working in a virtual environment has many benefits, including reduced expenditure on office space, less travel time, increased employee satisfaction and loyalty, increased efficiency, and a positive impact on the environment (APQC, 2020b; Barrero et al., 2021;Popovici & Popovici, 2020). About 90% of the managers in the government offices in Israel, who participated in a recent survey by the Civil Service Commission (2023), reported that the remote work productivity of their unit's employees contributes to a large to very large extent to achieving the goals of the annual work plan. Our study's findings can support the current shift taking place towards a flexible employment policy even in the post-pandemic era (APQC, 2020a; Barrero et al., 2021;Guyot & Sawhill, 2020;Yang et al., 2021), including in the public sector in Israel (Benita, 2020;Flug et al., 2021).
Our Hypothesis H1 further stated that the subjects' perception of IM quality would not change significantly when working from the office during COVID-19. However, contrary to our expectations, a decline in IM quality was reported by those continuing working from the office during the pandemic period. A possible explanation is the lack of IT support for work continuity in offices, as IT departments had to focus addressing the challenges and complexities involved in accessing information remotely while maintaining strict information security rules.
Another explanation involves the difficulty some office workers had in dealing with the shift to digitization accelerated by the pandemic. Despite the availability of more modern tools, hard copies of documents can still be found in many organizations. Specifically, there are government systems that still rely on outdated technologies, including the fax machine, which proved its limitations in the global crisis (Shankar et al., 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic, however, encouraged rapid digitization of work processes and a paperless environment (APQC, 2020a). It is possible that employees with a lower level of technological know-how were the first to return to or remain in traditional workspaces, and so were the first to experience difficulties adapting to the increasing digitization that many offices underwent. Indeed, it is recognized that at the beginning of the pandemic, many employees faced difficulties adapting to the use of online tools (Al-Habaibeh et al., 2021). In summary, the analysis shows that Hypothesis H1 was refuted. This study further examined the effect of the size of the organization on the perception of IM quality during the pandemic, regardless of work location. We hypothesized in Hypothesis H2 that the smaller the organization, the higher the tendency would be to report a decline in IM quality. This hypothesis was based on the fact that larger organizations in Israel have been found to have a higher level of readiness for the COVID-19 crisis (Stolero, 2020). The results of our study show that organizational size indeed had an impact on IM quality. Following COVID-19, IM quality was reported to decline in small organizations. In addition, we find that IM quality was perceived as increasing in medium-sized organizations, while, contrary to our expectations, significant changes were not detected in larger organizations.
Organizations' ability to transition to IMS enabling remote work was clearly dependent on resources, crisis preparedness levels, and the quality of existing systems. Budgetary limitations, more pronounced in smaller organizations, may explain the lack of investment in optimal solutions to enable accessing information remotely. In contrast, large organizations have more manpower, infrastructure, and resources, so they are generally more stable in their ability to handle crises. We may also assume that large organizations tend to manage risks more effectively and frequently, which helped them overcome the crisis related to COVID-19. With regards to medium-sized organizations, we believe that some of the IMS already existed and the crisis expedited its expansion. This would explain, in our view, the perception of the improvement of IM quality. Thus, we conclude that Hypothesis H2 was only partially affirmed.
Research investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the frequency of use of technological tools for the management of organizational information resources is almost nonexistent. Given the frequent adoption of IT and communication solutions during an unprecedented global disruption (Ågerfalk et al., 2020), we hypothesized in Hypothesis H3a that COVID-19 would contribute to an increase in the frequency of IMS use reported by respondents.
The present study, however, finds that for many workers the opposite is the case: over half of the respondents who claimed to not have used IMS prior to the pandemic stated that they still did not use them after the pandemic's outbreak. Perhaps this was due to low organizational awareness regarding the importance of IM in information-intensive organizations. Another possible reason is the timing of the research, up to a year into the pandemic. A more optimistic picture might be revealed as organizations further adapt and acclimate to the "new normal" over time. Even now, other indications did point to a certain increase in IMS use. 26% of workers who reported a lack of use or infrequent use of IMS pre-COVID-19 confirmed they use it more than once a day since the outbreak of the pandemic. In summary, only a partial confirmation of hypothesis Hypothesis H3a is obtained.
"For better or for worse, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought information and communications technologies to the forefront of human life" (Barnes, 2020, p. 1). Technology provides alternative ways of organizing work that challenge traditional management paradigms (Popovici & Popovici, 2020). In this context, we were interested in whether and how the frequency of IMS use affected the IM quality following the outbreak of COVID-19. Accordingly, in Hypothesis H3b we estimated that a direct positive correlation would be found between these two variables.
Our study reveals that reports of an increase in the frequency of IMS use during COVID-19 were indeed associated with reports of an improvement in the IM quality of the organization. Conversely, the more participants reported a decline in the frequency of IMS use, the more they tended to report a decline in the IM quality upon the pandemic's outbreak. These findings attest to the important role IT plays in IM in the modern organization in the day-to-day routine in general and in times of uncertainty in particular. In light of the above, we conclude that Hypothesis H3b has been fully confirmed.

| CONSEQUENCES OF THE STUDY
COVID-19 has already profoundly changed the way people work, and appears likely to continue to do so in the future. Although remote work may well become a main component of the future work environment, "it poses several considerable challenges to management, technology, and social interaction" (Naaman, 2022, p. 169). The post-pandemic period therefore raises many novel and relevant questions in the employment field, especially regarding IM and IMS.
At the theoretical level, the research makes a valuable empirical contribution to a better understanding of IM quality and the scope of IMS adoption in informationintensive organizations since the outbreak of the global pandemic. The findings add to the developing body of knowledge dealing with the challenges and opportunities that accompany the employment models that characterize the "new normal." In many senses, the new evidence reflected in this article is a unique glimpse into the broader consequences of the crisis in intra-organizational managerial and technological aspects.
From a practical point of view, this study can help policymakers evaluate the efficacy of various future work modalities. We reveal that, according to the respondents, the IM quality in organizations that shifted to remote or hybrid work did not decline, but was instead maintained. Given that the pandemic could be the starting point of a new era for flexible labor arrangements and virtual collaborations between distributed workforces, it seems ostensible that this finding has implications far beyond COVID-19.
Those who continued to work from physical offices during the pandemic, on the other hand, reported a decline in IM quality. Much information is exchanged between colleagues in informal channels, which were limited during the pandemic due to the social distancing policy. We believe that outlining work plans for strengthening relationships between employees will foster an organizational culture of trust, and support optimal information flow among teams and units. Therefore, executives should not only consider how to harness the power of IMS to serve the organization's goals, but also how novel ways to use technology to improve social interactions and mutual collaboration during emergencies.
In addition, we believe that the findings related to the frequency of IMS use should serve as an urgent call for IM experts and IMS developers. Beyond the need for user-friendly applications that provide functional solutions, a method must be found to promote the use of these tools among employees. They need to be convinced of the strengths and benefits of digital tools, not only from an organizational perspective to enhance productivity, but also from a personal point of view. Recognizing the capabilities of IMS for documentation, retention and accessibility of information is critical, especially when organizations are undergoing drastic change.
The modern labor market requires investment in digital transformation processes and new technologies, in a way that has the potential to impact IM and IMS. If so, the paper addresses a timely topic, and its findings provide practical implications for the design and use of IM in organizations in times of crisis. It can serve as a starting point for future research concerning policy implications and IMS development for remote and hybrid work settings.

| FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Several areas seem appropriate for future investigation. First, the link between organization size and IM quality and ability to adapt during crises can be further studied. We believe that this represents a core issue, one whose in-depth study may lead to a critical understanding of different risk management paradigms. Study of organizations of varying size in other countries and even in the private sector could help enrich our knowledge of the ways in which these variables are related. Second, other real-time and unobtrusive data collection methods could be considered in order to complement the questionnaires used in the present study. Third, this study was conducted during the height of the pandemic, during its first year. Research of the longer-term interplay of IM and different work modalities as companies and workers adjust to the "new normal" has the potential to reveal new findings as to optimal methods of working and IMS going forward.
ORCID Maayan Nakash https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6791-1624 Dan Bouhnik https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3141-8819 Yavetz, G., & Aharony, N. (2023 Co-workers share with me information that they think may help me do my job When a piece of information is missing, I know who is the expert to turn to The experts holding the information are always available to me for obtaining the information I need The organizational culture encourages information sharing among employees Upon acquiring new information, I always share it with employees in the organization that I think will need it (unit colleagues, work interfaces, direct or indirect manager, etc.) When I am exposed to new information, I document it in a place I think will be accessible to my colleagues I am always informed regarding any changes in the professional information necessary to do my job Before starting a new project, I check if the information on the subject already exists in the organization If I happen upon incorrect or outdated information, I know to whom to report It is accepted practice to use extra-organizational applications (such as, WhatsApp) in order to share information among employees Technical challenges make it difficult to connect to organizational information management systems remotely The COVID-19 crisis has raised the searching organizational information time Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic it is more difficult for me to locate experts who hold relevant information Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic it is more difficult for me to share information with my Co-workers The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated organizational processes for information sharing I think I am well acquainted with the organizational procedures associated with COVID-19 From the experience I gained during this period, the technology in the organization is mature enough to enable ongoing and effective work, by making the information accessible even in remote work