The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration
Bernstein and Turban measured what happens to human interaction when an office loses its walls, in two intervention-based field studies of corporate headquarters moving to more open space. Rather than surveying occupants, they used digital data from wearable devices recording face-to-face interaction alongside electronic communication servers capturing email and instant messaging, before and after each transition. Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly, by approximately seventy per cent in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction. The authors read this as open architecture triggering a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and instant messaging. They note it is the first study to measure both face-to-face and electronic interaction before and after the adoption of open office architecture. This vault records one limit alongside the finding: the devices detect proximity and speech activity, not conversation.
Bernstein and Turban measured what happens to human interaction when an office loses its walls, in two intervention-based field studies of corporate headquarters moving to more open space. Rather than surveying occupants, they used digital data from wearable devices recording face-to-face interaction alongside electronic communication servers capturing email and instant messaging, before and after each transition. Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly, by approximately seventy per cent in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction. The authors read this as open architecture triggering a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and instant messaging. They note it is the first study to measure both face-to-face and electronic interaction before and after the adoption of open office architecture. This vault records one limit alongside the finding: the devices detect proximity and speech activity, not conversation.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Bernstein, E. S., & Turban, S. (2018). 'The impact of the open workspace on human collaboration.' Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 373(1753), 20170239. Two intervention-based field studies of corporate headquarters moving to open office space, using wearable devices and electronic communication servers; face-to-face interaction decreased significantly, by approximately seventy per cent in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction. The authors describe this as socially withdrawing from officemates. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0239
Where we use it
- The Office That Stopped People Talking, Why We Work
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0239