A field study assessed disturbance by office noise in relation to environmental satisfaction, job satisfaction, and jot performance ratings among 2,391 employees at 58 sites before and/or after office renovation. In all, 54% said they were bothered often by noise, especial!y by people talking and telephones ringing. Disturbance by noise correlated with dissatisfaction with the environment and job but not with selfor supervisor-rated performance. Quasi-experimental analysis of groups reporting increased, decreased, or unchanged disturbance by noise revealed a drop in satisfaction concurrent with increasing noise. Disturbance by office noise may reflect a variety of environmental and job characteristics and may have a role in job satisfaction through both environmental satisfaction and job characteristics. Implications are discussed.
Office employees from three job groups-including 88 secretaries, 44 bookkeepers and accountants, and 22 office managers and administrators-completed a questionnaire and had their workspaces measured for the number of partitions, the amount of floorspace, the number of people in the room, and other features. The best single predictor of rated privacy of workspaces for all job groups was the number of partitions around the workspace. Occupants of private offices rated their workspaces most private, but office managers and administrators gave higher ratings than bookkeepers and accountants, who gave higher ratings than secretaries. Results suggested that the three job groups perceived privacy differently, depending on the demands of their work and their control over contact with others. Findings are explained in terms of a three-leveled hterarchy of privacy needs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.