Purpose This study aims to investigate the performance of open-plan office layouts and to identify occupants’ concerns in existing open-plan office layouts. Design/methodology/approach Workplace activity questionnaire (WAQ) was administered in the form of an online survey in March 2019, as part of a design briefing process for the expansion of the office facilities located in Bangalore, India, for a Fortune 100 software technology company. A total of 4,810 questionnaires were distributed and 3,877 responses were received (80.6% response rate). After that, 849 incomplete responses were eliminated from the analysis, resulting in a final sample size of 3,028. The questionnaire included 11 key activities conducted by the office workers and established the gap between the workers’ perceived importance and support from their existing facilities using a five-point Likert scale. Findings The findings of this study provide strong evidence that different physical environments influence the satisfaction of occupants. An improvement of the facilities, especially by enabling areas for quiet working, should be prioritized in relation to the other activities surveyed. Also, office workers perceived significantly different support levels for quiet working depending on their department, while there was no significant difference between the workers of different buildings. Research limitations/implications Individual demographic information was not collected because of the possibility of personal identification. There was also a lack of objective environmental measures, such as temperature and noise level. Thus, the quality of indoor environments was unknown. In this study, some respondents mentioned dissatisfaction with indoor environmental quality, including noise, temperature and air quality in their comments. Originality/value In the programming stage of a workplace design process, the WAQ survey tool has value because it renders important insight into the perception of a live workplace, which can then be used to determine priorities for a design effort. It clearly identifies the areas to focus on, ask questions about and develop improvements. Validating its reliability will enhance its credibility and confidence in its use. In addition, the large sample size provides statistical advantages in the data analysis, providing a higher likelihood to find a true positive of the findings of the study. Also, having a relatively high response rate provides an advantage of mitigating the risk of having non-response bias in the analysis.
Today, the concept of open plan is more and more widely accepted that many companies have switched to open-plan offices. Their design is an issue in the scope of space layout planning. Although there are many professional architectural layout design software in the market, in the real life, office designers seldom use these tools because their license fees are usually expensive and using them to solve an open-plan office design is like using an overly powerful and expensive tool to fix a minor problem. Therefore, manual drafting through a trial and error process is most often used. This article attempts to propose a lightweight tool to automate open-plan office layout generation using a nested genetic algorithm optimization with two layers, where the inner layer algorithm is embedded in the outer one. The result is enhanced by a local search. The main objective is to maximize space utilization by maximizing the size of the open workspace. This approach is different from its precedents, in that the location search is conducted on a grid map rather than several pre-selected candidate locations. Consequently, the generated layout design presents a less rigid workstation arrangement, inviting a casual and unrestrictive work environment. The real potential of the approach is reflected in the productivity of test fits. Automating and simplifying the generation of layouts for test fits can tremendously decrease the amount of time and resources required to generate them. The experimental case study shows that the developed approach is powerful and effective, making it a totally automated process.
Geo-economics mostly fall into the realist paradigm of International Relations since it is understood as the use of economic means under strategic military logic as principal instruments of statecraft. However, geo-economics is neither caused by states alone nor driven by multipolar rivalry solely. Instead, geo-economics requires a framework of study which considers that there are countless links of interdependence in the global economy that must be taken into consideration to explain state behaviour. Institutional liberalism provides geo-economics theoretical grounds to maintain cooperation and responsibility as central components of geo-economics.
This paper examines the reasons why Japan has been building a foreign trade policy based on a hub-and-spokes system. It will be argued that trade efficiency and exports promotion are assumptions that need a broader reconsideration through a geo-economics approach. What defines Japan’s pursuit of several bilateral trade agreements is assuring its relative economic hegemony whilst changes in the world balance of power are taking place. As Japan faces an uncertain and unforeseeable future, it needs to strengthen its trade policy to guarantee access to international markets. Japan’s trade policy goes beyond the efficiency scope and it entails a geo-economics elucidation.
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.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.