Collaborative communities as a selling point? From community-driven to service-purposed coworking spaces

Abstract

Coworking spaces emerged in the mid-2000s as collaborative workplaces that actively supported teleworkers and self-employed knowledge workers who shared various (work) environments to interlace themselves in supportive networks, tackle isolation, positively influence well-being, and collaboratively participate in knowledge-sharing activities. However, with the swift popularisation of the coworking model by 2020, newly established flexible office spaces have begun to refer to themselves as community-based workplaces even though they lacked the capacity to support their users’ interactions and collaborative work. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to explore how coworking spaces have transformed from community-based environments to a flexible place of work where establishing a collaborative community is not an organisational priority. The following exploratory research investigates a sample of 13 coworking spaces in Prague, the Czech Republic, and considers their capacity for supporting interactions and collaborative processes between their users. The results uncovered significant differences between coworking spaces, their spatial designs, the presence of mediation mechanisms, and the frequency of interactions between users, and suggest that the handful of sampled coworking environments misuse the notion of community. In that context, the following study indicates that contemporary coworking spaces can revert to community washing to deliberately pursue economic self-interest rather than support decentralised peer-to-peer exchange that would lead to developing a coworking community.

Taboo Trade-Offs in the Community Business: The Case of Coworking

“…The website itself was co-purchased as part of a community effort by members of that Google Group (including one of the authors of this article). The emphasis on community remains central to individual-purposed coworking spaces today (Blagoev et al, 2019; Garrett et al, 2014; Orel & Bennis, 2021a, 2021b; Spinuzzi et al, 2019; Waters-Lynch et al, 2016), and in a way that may be unique in the service industry (see Spinuzzi et al, 2019 for a useful review). What little empirical data exists suggests that a meaningful sense of community is sought by a significant proportion of coworking space members as well (Rus & Orel, 2015; Spinuzzi et al, 2019).…”

“…This ambiguity in meaning has become more pronounced as the industry has grown and diversified (King, 2018; Orel & Bennis, 2021a, 2021b; Spinuzzi et al, 2019). As the coworking concept gained traction and media attention, especially with the dramatic early success of WeWork, many serviced-office providers began to rebrand as coworking spaces and to use the term community as a keyword without necessarily making a meaningful shift toward promoting it.…”

“…As the coworking concept gained traction and media attention, especially with the dramatic early success of WeWork, many serviced-office providers began to rebrand as coworking spaces and to use the term community as a keyword without necessarily making a meaningful shift toward promoting it. That has not been as problematic as might be expected, since the clientele of these larger group-purposed coworking spaces are more likely to be teams from the same organization working together and many of those teams were not seeking community in the first place (Orel & Bennis, 2021a, 2021b; Spinuzzi et al, 2019). But the ambiguity remains problematic for coworking spaces seeking to create authentic community because it promotes mixed messages about what the terms community and coworking mean and what people looking for either one can expect when joining a coworking space.…”

“…They target individual white-collar workers: freelancers, remote workers, and solo-entrepreneurs, rather than startups or teams from existing organizations. Most importantly, a core feature of their promised service is to facilitate a sense of community among those unaffiliated, individual workers who might otherwise work from home, from cafés, or alone in a private office (Akhavan, 2021; Blagoev et al, 2019; Garrett et al, 2014; Hunt, 2009; Merkel, 2015; Orel & Bennis, 2021a, 2021b; Rus & Orel, 2015; Spinuzzi et al, 2019; Spreitzer et al, 2017; Sundsted et al, 2009; Waters-Lynch et al, 2016). The primary workspaces are open-plan; the spaces employ community managers whose job it is to facilitate community, and they organize activities intended to increase the sense of belonging, common purpose, and depth of relationships that often corresponds to a sense of community (Cabral & Winden, 2016; Merkel, 2015; Orel & Dvouletý, 2020).…”