Andrea Gerlitz
Management researcher whose systematic review put the open-plan finding inside a wider literature, and gave the cost argument its bill.
Who they are
Gerlitz and Marcel Hülsbeck began with 429 published papers on office concepts and performance between 2005 and 2022, and narrowed them to 46 empirical articles, organised around seven dimensions including personality fit, health and satisfaction.
Their phrase for the result is a productivity tax.
Key papers
Gerlitz, A., & Hülsbeck, M. (2023). The productivity tax of new office concepts: a comparative review of open-plan offices, activity-based working, and single-office concepts. Management Review Quarterly, 73, 1889-1926.
Key ideas
Open-plan offices can reduce real-estate costs and lead to lower performance, a tax that in their reading outweighs the initial saving.
Activity-based working negatively affects performance, satisfaction and health, while retaining potential to improve collaboration under professional and proactive management.
For knowledge workers, the single office was the environment associated with the best individual and organisational performance. That association carries an unresolved selection confound, since people who get their own office differ in seniority and job type from those who do not.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1007/s11301-022-00316-2