Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: In View: Repercussions
Bernstein and Turban’s work underscores how important it is to provide workers with spaces where they can work, at least occasionally, out of view of others. The researchers found that, at two organizations, when employees transitioned from workspaces with employee cubicles to ones in which there were no visual dividers between workers that “Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interactions decreased significantly (approximately 70%) in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction, in short, rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM.” Bernstein and Turban collected data using sociometric devices worn by employees and from email and instant messaging (IM) records. The workplaces at each organization were only briefly described in the paper published. Transitions involved “transformation[s] from assigned seats in cubicles to similarly assigned seats …
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