Creating business value with open space flexible offices

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine what organisational and management practices used in connection with open space flexible offices create business value. It seeks to identify what consequences this may have for successful real estate practices. Design/methodology/approach – This paper utilises an inductive case study approach. The international telecom company Telenor has implemented open space flexible offices from top to bottom amongst their 35,000 employees. The case description and analysis is based on secondary data, user evaluations and 20 interviews with middle- and top-level managers across levels and functional departments. Findings – The case of Telenor reveals that leadership and organizing issues are important, together with work modes and communication technology, for a productive use of work place design. The paper highlights specifically how the open, transparent, flexible office solution creates business value when used with centralised and standardised organisational management systems and a participative, informal leadership culture. Research limitations/implications – The study is based on one case, so the findings need to be tested across a representative sample of companies. Practical implications – Managers need to take both organisational and management issues into consideration when implementing new office space design. This challenges also the existing real estate strategies to include the organisational and management issues in their planning. Originality/value – The originality and value of the paper lies in the analysis and findings of the Telenor case introducing organizational and management perspectives to real estate issues.

Creative Practices Embodied, Embedded, and Enacted in Architectural Settings: Toward an Ecological Model of Creativity

“…The physical context of creativity, including architectural settings where people work, remains largely unexamined — in part because of the complexity involved in empirically studying it. Economic pressure on companies to capitalize not only on employee creative productivity by also on every square foot of floor space reveals the untapped potential of architectural designs to add creative value to organizations ( De Paoli et al, 2013 ). Yet there is no theoretical framework appropriate for guiding design decisions or predicting post-occupancy impacts in spaces to support creativity.…”

Make it work! Creating an integrated workplace concept

“…With regards to the mobile work life, mobility must be regarded as the combination of working from different internal and external locations (Van Meel et al, 2010). As employees in a mobile working life will not all be present at the same time, space-sharing systems may also significantly contribute to cost reductions (Bjerrum and Bødker, 2003;Gibson, 2003;Ruostela et al, 2015), more sustainable buildings and increased operational flexibility (Haynes, 2007;De Paoli et al, 2013;Nathan and Doyle, 2002).…”

“…Ultimately, this may contribute to the development of an agile organisation that on multiple levels may respond to changing situations. Implementation of workplace concepts must, henceforth, be understood in a wider organisational context -as a part of the human resource strategy supported by the management (Skyrme, 1994;Van der Voordt, 2004;De Paoli et al, 2013).…”

Community and Collaboration in a Shared Multi-space Office

“…Several case studies concerning the work communities that use shared and flexible offices have already been done, also in the Nordic countries (e.g. Jensen 2008;De Paoli et al 2013;Babapour et al 2018;Våland & Georg 2018). However, references to the coworking literature are rare in the existing case study research of activity-based and multi-space offices, and vice versa.…”