Stephen Turban
Researcher in organisational behaviour, co-author of the sensor study of two open-plan transitions.
Who they are
Turban co-wrote the 2018 study that used wearable devices and electronic communication data to measure interaction patterns before and after two moves to open architecture.
The design answers the criticism that dogs most workplace research, which is that it asks people how they feel about a change rather than recording what they did.
Key papers
Bernstein, E. S., & Turban, S. (2018). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 373(1753), 20170239.
Key ideas
Removing spatial boundaries did not prompt more face-to-face collaboration. It coincided with substantially less.
The remaining interaction moved into email and instant messaging.
Social withdrawal is the authors' interpretation of that pattern, and this site records it as an interpretation rather than a tested mechanism.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0239