The Physical Environment of the Office: Contemporary and Emerging Issues

An organization’s workspace, the physical environment an organization provides for its employees to carry out their work activities, constitutes the second largest financial overhead (after human resources) for most organizations (McCoy, 2005). Of the workspace provided, most employees in developed countries work in some form of office environment (Duffy, 1997) and studies of this practice have found that it has a powerful role in shaping a diverse range of psychological and behavioral outcomes, including individual work motivation (e.g., Oldham & Brass, 1979), job satisfaction (e.g., Veitch, Charles, Farley, et al., 2007), and patterns of interactions (e.g., Boyce, 1974; Ives & Ferdinands, 1974; Sundstrom & Sundstrom, 1986). Furthermore, the impact of offices upon their occupants’ personal productivity has been estimated to be somewhere in the region of 20% (e.g., Leaman & Bordass, 2005). Within the organizational literature, offices have been typically described as either traditional (sometimes referred to as enclosed or cellular offices) or open-plan. Traditional offices tend to house one or two individuals in private rooms, enclosed by walls, often containing most of the amenities required for their job (Danielsson & Bodin, 2008). Open-plan offices are characterized by a lack of interior walls, tend to be larger and contain greater numbers of workers, with individual workstations arranged within the office in groups (Brennan, Chugh, & Kline, 2002; Brookes & Kaplan, 1972). Workspace design, however, is currently under organizational scrutiny due to the changing nature of work. It is evident that many organizations are re-evaluating their facilities to ensure