Workspace in supporting strategy implementation – a study of 25 knowledge-intensive organisations

Abstract

Purpose

Organisational strategy becomes reality by connecting organisation’s resources and capabilities in daily operations, and physical workspace is one of the environments in which this takes place. This study aims to explore to what extent factors required for successful strategy implementation are considered when designing, using and managing workspaces of knowledge-intensive organisations.

Design/methodology/approach

For the study, managers in 25 large and medium-sized knowledge-intensive organisations were interviewed. The semi-structured interviews focused on organisation’s strategy, strategy implementation practices and workspace design and management. To form a comprehensive framework of strategy implementation success factors for the study, the factors of 11 frameworks were analysed, grouped and renamed.

Findings

Current workspace design, usage and management mainly support human-related strategy implementation factors. However, both organisation- and human-related factors are needed for the strategy implementation to be successful. Therefore, the organisations studied may have unused potential in their workspaces to ensure strategy-aligned operations and behaviour.

Practical implications

Due to the potential imbalance between organisation- and human-related strategy implementation factors, a more holistic, organisational-level approach to workspace design, usage and management is recommended to ensure the success of strategy implementation.

Originality/value

Workspaces have extensively been studied from individual strategy implementation factors’ as well as employees’ perspectives. Prior to this work, there are only few studies exploring workspace in the holistic, strategy implementation context.

Citation

Wäistö, P., Ukko, J. and Rantala, T. (2024), "Workspace in supporting strategy implementation – a study of 25 knowledge-intensive organisations", Facilities, Vol. 42 No. 15/16, pp. 53-69. https://doi.org/10.1108/F-07-2023-0060

Introduction

Strategy implementation is one of the key management functions to ensure organisation’s future success, and it helps to close the gap between strategy formulation and organisational performance (Crittenden and Crittenden, 2008). Although organisations are improving in strategy implementation (Cândido and Santos, 2015), failure rates are still high, as 50–90% of strategy implementations are evaluated to fall short (Carlopio and Harvey, 2012; Crittenden and Crittenden, 2008; Speculand, 2009; Yang et al., 2010).

The strategic purpose of a knowledge-intensive organisation is to create and apply knowledge both within and with its environment to create value for its customers and other interest groups. The definition implies that knowledge-intensive organisations can operate in various businesses and public sectors. Knowledge creation involves all levels of the organisation (i.e. individuals, groups and the whole organisation) (Bratianu and Orzea, 2012; Nonaka et al., 1994), and therefore, organisational strategy is realised only through the organisation’s joint and coordinated daily operations and behaviour. Physical workspace is one of the environments where both an organisation as a system and its employees work for the organisational strategy and goals.

Workspace is an important element in successful strategy implementation (Kampschroer et al., 2007; Skogland and Hansen, 2017; Vischer, 1995), yet most of the workspace research deals mainly with employee-level outcomes, such as employee satisfaction, performance and well-being. Less is known about how physical space interrelates with organisational behaviour and organisational-level outcomes (Appel-Meulenbroek et al., 2018; Gjerland et al., 2019; Sailer, 2014). Kampschroer and Heerwagen (2005) also wondered why emphasis is being placed on people and their behaviour instead of workspace as a platform for that behaviour. Gjerland et al. (2019) concluded that more research is required on the business value of workspace, as it is often used as an argument for office concept decisions. Workspace is crucial in enabling not only the employees’ performance but also the performance of the systemic entity by guiding the organisation’s joint operations and behaviour toward a strategy-aligned direction.

Corporate real estate management (CREM) plays an important role in ensuring the quality of the workspace. It is crucial to understand how to align facilities with the organisational strategy and goals (Anker Jensen et al., 2014), but no clear understanding exists as to what the key variables for the alignment should be (Cooke et al., 2021). In their meta-study, Heywood and Arkesteijn (2017) identified strategic management as one of the three theoretical approaches to the alignment but found the aligning of facilities and organisational strategy to be pluralistic and complex in nature. Furthermore, they emphasised the importance of defining what is actually being aligned, such as facilities, CRE strategy or CREM as a function.

For the CREM to have a clear and solid grounds for the CRE strategy, business requirements for workspaces must first be defined. This study approaches workspace from organisations’ top management and business strategy perspectives and is aimed at identifying the aspects of organisational strategy emphasised in the current workspace decisions and development, and understanding how these decisions align with the success factors of strategy implementation.

Strategy implementation frameworks define the factors that are required for the organisations to succeed in strategy implementation, i.e. to create, enable and maintain strategy-aligned operations and behaviour. All strategy implementation factors have their representations in workspace: on what grounds an organisation is being organised in space; how workspace directs operations, attention and relations; what values, reactions and feelings are being promoted; and how space is instructed to be used. Although physical workspace is one of the environments where organisation’s strategy-aligned operations and behaviour come together, little research has been conducted on how current workspaces actually support the alignment of these factors.

The purpose of this study is to gain insight to what extent workspaces are used to promote strategy implementation in the knowledge-intensive organisations interviewed. The phenomenon is approached with two critical strategy implementation requirements:

RQ1.

Are strategy implementation factors identified and supported by workspace design and management in knowledge-intensive organisations?

RQ2.

Is the alignment of strategy implementation factors being promoted and ensured by their workspace design and management?

As a theoretical contribution, this study addresses the question of whether current workspaces have, in addition to the employee level, an organisational- and systemic-level role in building an organisation’s future success. Given that strategy implementation is an organisational effort, it was chosen as the framework for the study. For practitioners, the study provides an approach that can be applied in strategy processes as well as in workspace design and management.

This paper is organised as follows. First, key phenomena are introduced, including strategy implementation factors and comprehensive framework, and workspace as a platform for the organisation. The research design is then described, followed by the research results and analysis. Finally, the strategy implementation approach to workspace design and management is discussed, and conclusions are presented.

Conceptual background

Strategy implementation success factors

Strategy describes how the organisation is going to reach its long-term objectives (Srivastava and Sushil, 2013) by linking its crucial resources, core competencies and other attributes (Babalola and Nwanzu, 2020). Strategy implementation then transforms the goals and strategy into operations, actions and behaviour that are executed on a daily basis. In other words, strategy implementation puts the formulated strategy to work (Heide et al., 2002), and successful implementation is the sum of all actions and resources as “a multifaceted and complex organisational process” (Noble, 1999, p. 131).

Strategy implementation research has identified factors that ensure organisation’s implementation capability and long-term endurance. In total, 11 strategy implementation frameworks were analysed for this study (Amoo et al., 2019; Brinkschröder, 2014; Crittenden and Crittenden, 2008; Galbraith, 2002; Higgins, 2005; Noble, 1999; Okumus, 2003; Pryor and Smith, 2007; Tawse and Tabesh, 2021; Waterman et al., 1980; Yang et al., 2010), and the factors presented in the frameworks were scrutinised in detail, regrouped and renamed. From these, 10 strategy implementation factors were identified (Table 1).

Waterman et al. (1980) also introduced the concept of “soft” aspects of implementation factors to balance managers’ tendency to focus mostly on “hard” aspects such as strategy and structure, when “soft” aspects were easily claimed to be human resources department’s responsibility or considered too intangible to be managed. Beer et al. (2005) and Ravanfar (2015) listed strategy, structure and systems as hard factors and considered style, staff, skills and shared values as soft. Ravanfar also described hard factors as easier to identify and manage, while soft ones are more likely to create a sustained competitive advantage. Alam (2017) extended this notion by saying that hard factors can be directly influenced, whereas soft factors are more intangible and influenced by culture. The strategy implementation framework used in this study (Figure 1) includes the 10 implementation factors identified, and factors are further grouped into hard, soft and context-related aspects.

Hard factors form the foundation upon which the organisation operates. Structure and organisation describe the formal and informal structures with which the organisation creates value and responds to external competition. Operations, processes and systems are practices, methods and agreements used to implement and align organisation’s operations and to ensure organisational performance. Other resources represent other issues needed for strategy implementation, such as organisational-level capabilities, technologies and relations.

Meanwhile, soft factors are linked to individuals working in the organisation. Human resources include both employees and other interest groups with the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to implement the strategy. Commitment refers to the willingness of an organisation’s members to follow the strategy and execute actions and behaviour required.

Some factors are considered hard or soft, depending on the context. Leadership and management involvement is a hard factor when considered as a management structure, but a soft factor when linked to the manager as a person. Communication refers to both the mechanisms and distribution of formal and informal information in the organisation as well as to the interaction among organisation members. Culture and values describe both an organisation’s expectations, preferences and choices and those of the individual members.

Control and feedback include both the mechanisms and management of strategy implementation. In this framework, strategy and control and feedback can be seen as a continuum, and they are not defined as neither hard nor soft factors.

In addition to individual factors, the alignment of factors is a foundation for successful strategy implementation and strategic performance (Heide et al., 2002; Higgins and Mcallaster, 2004; Merkus et al., 2019; Pettigrew, 1987). Although it is a critical issue, organisations often have difficulties balancing factors in a coherent way (Srivastava and Sushil, 2017). Yang et al. (2010) also noted that there is no single recipe for strategy implementation, but organisations should be aware of the diverse dependencies between individual factors. Okumus (2003) concluded that, in some cases, coherence may be difficult or even impossible to achieve because of the complex and dynamic nature of implementation situations.

Workspace as a platform for strategy implementation

A physical workspace is one of the environments where an organisation and its employees work to achieve their goals. At its best, workspace is a tool and an enabler for the organisation’s core business activities (Hassanain, 2010; Jayantha and Oladinrin, 2020; Kampschroer and Heerwagen, 2005; Olson, 2002). Sailer et al. (2009) confirmed that workspace configurations have an effect on organisational behaviour, and Langston and Lauge-Kristensen (2002, p. 3) emphasised that:“Facilities should not be seen as an overhead [cost factor], but rather as an integral part of an ‘ecosystem’ necessary to enable people [and organisation] to perform at their best”.

Elsbach and Pratt (2007, p. 182), on the other hand, concluded that the “Physical environment plays a major role in facilitating and constraining organisational actions […] but choosing objects and arrangements in organisational work settings is one of the most difficult tasks a manager faces”.

Becker and Steele (1995) summarise the importance of workspace by saying that the connection between organisation and workspace is of strategic importance.

De Paoli et al. (2013) stated that both organisational and managerial issues are needed for the workspace to create value. However, Levin (2005, p. 299) expressed doubts regarding organisations’ ability to reach the potential of the workspaces “Even organisations wishing to use workspace as enabler, rarely the connection is made to business strategy […] business appears to confuse design of collaborative workspaces with connections to business strategy. Workspace design seems to be based on a combination of trends and entitlement”.

He urges the “congruence between business model and design of workspace, and the need to connect workspace design drivers to strategy” (Levin, 2005, p. 301).

The impact of workspace on individual strategy implementation factors is already widely studied. Early ideas of workspace and organisational structure rose in the late 1960s – early 1970s. Structure was not yet linked to workspace but was considered helpful in understanding “how the firm hangs together” (Duffy, 1974, p. 111). Later, Bodin Danielsson et al. (2013, p. 196) concluded that “architecture is a tool to create and change the structure of organisation […] and because of its physical, psychosocial and organisational factors, office design should adopt a holistic approach”. On improving processes by workspace design based on user feedback, Duffy et al. (2011) found no particular highlights. In contrast, Vischer (2008) claimed that the office environment affects individual, group and organisation-level performance and that supporting operational functionality is one of the important aspects of workspace design.

Workspace also influences how leadership is perceived (Bodin Danielsson et al., 2013). In particular, hybrid work and virtual teaming place challenges on leadership, and to build trust, it is even more important to develop workspaces that stimulate face-to-face working (De Paoli and Ropo, 2015). Communication and collaboration have also been of great interest in workspace research. For example, human interaction has been found to usually be unplanned and unpredicted, and it does not follow the intended use of space (Sailer et al., 2016). Lansdale et al. (2011) and Oseland et al. (2011) added that an open-plan workspace is not sufficient to increase collaboration, but changes in factors such as organisation structure, rewarding and change management are first required.

Culture and values have been identified as important design drivers for workspaces. A workspace is known to create and support culture (Kallio et al., 2015; Zerella et al., 2017) both at the organisational and departmental levels (Price, 2007), but at team level, cultures can be too fragmented to be supported by a workspace (Maślikowska and Gibbert, 2019). Workspace can be used in changing culture, but succeeding in it requires understanding of organisational aspects and human–environment relationships (Skogland and Hansen, 2017). Workspace’s impact on human resources and commitment is also well covered in workspace research. Workspace is known to impact employee satisfaction and performance (Appel-Meulenbroek et al., 2018; Hoendervanger et al., 2019), participation (Binyaseen, 2010) and well-being (Colenberg et al., 2021; Danielsson and Bodin, 2008), as well as attracting, engaging and retaining employees (Appel-Meulenbroek et al., 2022).

To evaluate a workspace, there are several employee-focused tools, such as post-occupancy evaluation (Abisuga et al., 2020; Hassanain et al., 2018), work environment diagnosis instrument (Groen et al., 2019) and tools for assessing workspace’s impact on employee productivity (Bortoluzzi et al., 2018). However, Duffy (1974) pointed out that focusing on individual responses does not directly indicate what individuals do together, i.e. how well an organisation operates and performs. Duffy (1990) later suggested that metrics should be linked to operations and performance achieved in the workspace. Some researchers have already focused on performance (Voordt and Jensen, 2018) or the quality of workspace more from a business perspective (Appel-Meulenbroek and Feijts, 2007; Hassanain, 2010; Petrulaitiene and Jylhä, 2015).

The first efforts to study workspace from a more holistic, strategy-implementation perspective were made in early 2000. Levin (2005) suggested that workspace design could benefit from applying strategy implementation models such as 8S in design processes, and Kampschroer et al. (2007) used Balanced Score Card to link business goals and changes in behaviour that should be supported by workspace. This study follows the suggestions of these studies and evaluates workspace design and management practices in the strategy implementation context.

The terms workspace and workplace are both used when discussing organisation’s work environment. In this study, workspace refers to the physical environment, including designing, using, managing and developing these arrangements.

Research design

The purpose of this paper is to study whether current workspaces are designed and managed to support strategy implementation by identifying and supporting individual implementation factors and ensuring the alignment of them. A factor is identified if it is acknowledged, supported when a workspace is designed to promote the factor and aligned when the workspace promotes the coherence among all the factors.

As the goal of this study was to gain an overall understanding of the phenomenon, the sample consisted of 25 large and medium-sized organisations covering various branches of the Finnish knowledge-intensive sector. The organisations varied in terms of businesses, ownership, turnover, number of personnel, the quantity and quality of workspaces and the office concepts applied. The inclusion criteria for selecting the sample were that organisations should be knowledge-intensive, should have physical workspaces designed for knowledge work, have had a workspace project within the past five years or were actively considering one, and that the top management had been involved in making the workspace decisions.

The organisations considered applicable were pre-evaluated based on the inclusion criteria, on the top management’s interest in the topic and availability, and to ensure the coverage of the knowledge-intensive sector. Table 2 presents an overview of the organisations and managers interviewed.

The study was conducted using semi-structured interviews over a period of three months in late 2021. The interviews were executed mostly online; seven were face-to-face meetings. All interviews covered the following predesigned topics: organisation’s strategy and goals, strategy implementation process, workspace design drivers, workspace usage and management, and workspace evaluation. Interviews lasted from 59 to 91 min, average 73. In addition to the interviews, strategy materials, organisation presentations and websites were used to deepen the understanding of the organisations. The interviews were transcribed after each meeting and coded by the authors using Atlas.ti once all interviews were completed. Interviews were then further coded in three phases: 1) the initial deductive coding according to the success factors in Figure 1, and then data of each success factor was 2) open coded and 3) descriptive coded in more detail.

Finally, to analyse the alignment, data on individual factors was consolidated to achieve a holistic understanding of the balance between the factors. After the coding rounds, researcher triangulation (Creswell, 2015) was used, and the results were discussed and validated by the authors in several meetings.

Results

All individual strategy implementation factors were identified, but not all were supported by workspace design, usage, and management. Even if identified and supported, workspace design and management might still support only some aspects because of the limited interpretations of factors. The synthesis of the workspace design, usage, and management supporting individual strategy implementation is shown in Figure 2.

Support for organisation-related factors

Structure and organisation were identified in workspace design and management, but supporting them was moderate. For instance, teams could be given specific locations in the workspace, but usually on a recommendation basis. Even when the locations were fixed, employees could still choose where to work. Thus, organisation was only loosely or not at all present in the workspace, and therefore, it would not guide the daily operations and behaviour. In some organisations, customers or partners were welcome to work on the premises. This arrangement made the organisation in the workspace constantly change, and the support of workspace for the organisation and its structures was less stable. Other organisations chose a different path, dedicating their workspaces strictly to internal use, and found it beneficial for internal coherence and trust.

Operations, processes, and systems were best supported in organisations where functions required special settings or equipment. Some organisations arranged workspaces according to key processes, for example, R&D, but in most organisations, functions and employees operated in generic workspaces with little or no customising. In these organisations, workspaces did not provide guidance or support for operations, processes or systems required for implementing strategy.

Other resources, particularly company image, cost efficiency and effective use of space, were often mentioned as drivers of workspace design. The security of the organisation, employees and operations were design drivers, especially in sensitive businesses like energy or telecommunication.

Support for context-related factors

All three context-related factors were usually identified and supported. However, the link to strategy was not clearly articulated, and factors were mostly considered as soft factors. Leadership and management involvement was usually high at the beginning of a workspace project, but design decisions were mostly made by employee representatives, human resource management, and designers. Collaboration and culture were the driving motivations, and employees were encouraged to network by changing locations in the workspace. For formal communication, cafeterias or similar areas with central location were used. Workspaces were seen as social and collaborative platforms and ways to promote the desired aspects of culture. However, justifications for the decisions were quite similar regardless of the organisation, which gave the impression that culture- and value-related expectations might be based on more general trends and not directly on the strategy.

Support for human-related factors

Soft, human-related factors were well supported by workspace design and management. However, argumentation of factors was again general in nature and similar across organisations. Employee experience and engagement were highly emphasised, and workspace was seen as a tool for attracting, committing, and retaining talents. Still, it remains unclear as to what extent goals were driven specifically from the organisational strategy or whether they were reflections of other motivations, such as HR or workspace design trends.

Control and feedback of the ability of workspace to support strategy implementation

Workspaces were mostly evaluated by costs, technical quality or efficiency of space. Some organisations used employee surveys to follow the user experience, satisfaction with and usability of spaces. Employees choosing to come to the office instead of working remotely was also seen as feedback. The absence of strategy-related metrics raised yet again the question of whether workspaces are seen as a platform for strategy implementation or more of a technical, financial or human-related resource.

Supporting the alignment of strategy implementation factors

For successful strategy implementation, organisation’s operations and behaviour should be “pointing” to same direction, i.e. to be aligned (Waterman et al., 1980), and thus, alignment should also be an important criterion for workspace design and management. However, as seen in Figure 2, workspaces of the organisations interviewed might not support the alignment in an optimal way because of some factors being well supported while others being less supported. Therefore, the palette of factors is imbalanced.

According to the strategy implementation theories, both hard and soft factors are important to ensure the success of implementation and need to be aligned. Throughout the sample of this study, soft factors were well considered in the workspace decisions and represented in the workspaces, thus creating a strong support for the strategy implementation (see Figure 2 column “Strong”). Workspaces were designed to express the desired organisational culture and leadership style, to promote internal communication and networking, and to support employee well-being and motivation, as well as the employer image desired.

However, as stated in Figure 1, soft factors need a structural foundation and frame to benefit the organisation as a whole. In other words, hard factors are needed to create a coherent systemic entity. Despite this, organisation-related and hard, context-related factors that create and maintain this organisation-level coherence were not as actively considered or represented in the workspace decisions and design and were less supported than the soft factors (see Figure 2 column “Moderate”). In practice, all organisations do have the hard factors listed in the 2 + 8 model: all organisations, for example, have a structure, knowledge or other processes, and modus operandi. Without these, there would actually be no organisation. However, the workspaces of the organisations interviewed were mostly designed without considering the value of these factors in creating and encouraging strategy-aligned operations and behaviour in the daily working environments. Therefore, the workspaces may provide only a moderate organisation-related support for strategy implementation. In a balanced situation, all strategy implementation factors, and hard and soft perspectives would be carefully considered, and their roles identified in directing strategy-aligned daily operations and behaviour of the organisation on the organisational, group, and individual levels.

Four phenomena causing the misalignment

Four phenomena were found to create this situation: interpretation of factors, valuation of factors, factors contradicting one another, and imbalance in perspectives.

In the strategy implementation frameworks, the factors are defined on a general level. In the organisations interviewed, some factors were interpreted selectively or more narrowly than originally intended, and some aspects were missing. For instance, by definition, structure and organisation include all the formal and informal structures needed to create value and respond to external competition, for example, formal hierarchy, distribution of power and responsibilities, tasks, and the organisation of management. The organisations interviewed did consider hierarchy and functions, but, for instance, distribution of power, duties and responsibilities were not included. Operations, processes, and systems were usually not mentioned in the discussions, maybe because the concept of process is not spontaneously considered to be applicable to knowledge-intensive organisations.

For the success of strategy implementation, all factors are crucial “building blocks”, but in this study, the soft factors were valued over the hard factors. For instance, communication, culture and values, human resources and commitment were well supported in workspace design and management. Simultaneously, structure and organisation, operations, processes and systems as well as feedback and control were usually not drivers for workspace design or management, thereby creating an imbalance in the valuation of factors.

Even if identified and well-supported, factors could still contradict one another and thus distract the alignment of factors. For example, as mentioned earlier, when organisation units are given home locations in the workspace but employees still have the freedom to choose where to work, support for structure and organisation in the workspace is compromised.

The alignment of factors calls for organisational-level perspective. However, according to this study, the organisations interviewed were mainly focusing on employee-related issues, such as employee performance, satisfaction or experience. Although these are important, employee performance is not, per se, equal to organisation-level performance or results.

Discussion

Even though previous studies (e.g. Kampschroer et al., 2007; Skogland and Hansen, 2017; Vischer, 1995) have highlighted the importance of workspace as an element in strategy implementation, the results of this study indicate that strategy implementation requirements are not a strong driver for the current workspace design and management, and barely any differences could be found in organisations’ approaches to workspaces. Regardless of the organisation interviewed, the office concepts and design drivers were quite similar, the same strategy implementation factors were emphasised and overlooked, and the methods and criteria used in evaluating workspaces (if evaluated) were alike. As Levin (2005) noted, this raises the question of whether workspace decisions are based on strategy or some other motivators, such as modern work life and workspace trends.

Based on the factors emphasised in the organisations, workspaces were mostly designed to promote human- or context-related factors that were characterised as soft. The results are also in line with those of, e.g. Abisuga et al. (2020), Groen et al. (2019) and Duffy (1974) regarding the evaluation of workspaces. For instance, employee satisfaction and performance, desire to work in the office and not in other locations, and employee well-being were measured and followed instead of organisation- or business-level outcomes. When considered, hard factors were mostly approached from the employee or team perspectives but not from that of the entire organisation. As mentioned, soft factors were introduced in the 1980s in a situation where organisations were mostly focusing on hard factors like structure, processes, and systems (Beer et al., 2005; Peters and Waterman, 1982). Since then, soft factors have gained much attention, both in organisations and in workspace design and management. Based on this study, it seems that hard factors have now become the underdog and should be re-promoted to reach a better balance.

Even though the alignment of strategy implementation factors is crucial for the success of implementation (Heide et al., 2002; Higgins and Mcallaster, 2004; Merkus et al., 2019; Pettigrew, 1987), the results of this study show that alignment was not supported optimally by the workspaces and was further compromised because of the undervaluation or narrow interpretation of factors. Therefore, it is possible that workspaces may distract or even hinder operations and behaviour needed to implement the strategy. In knowledge-intensive organisations, the implications may, however, be less evident and visible than in other types of organisations, such as missed opportunities and organisational underperformance rather than actual failures or confrontations. This, together with the lack of strategy-aligned, organisational-level evaluation, leaves the strategic quality of workspaces in the dark. The results of the study further indicate that, from the strategy implementation perspective, workspace metrics such as costs, efficiency of the use of space, and other facility-related goals are somewhat problematic (Langston and Lauge-Kristensen, 2002). Evaluating workspace’s ability to support operations and behaviour needed for strategy implementation would clarify the workspace’s role as an organisational-level resource and might eventually lead to more strategy-aligned design and use of it.

Finally, the study reveals a contradiction between what was explicitly said in the discussions, and both the strategy implementation frameworks (e.g. Amoo et al., 2019; Brinkschröder, 2014; Okumus, 2003; Waterman et al., 1980) and the results of this study. Despite the result showing that strategy implementation is not a strong driver of workspace decisions, most of the organisations interviewed claimed that their workspaces followed their organisational strategy and that workspace design drivers were based on the future needs of their organisations. This, together with the strong emphasis on the soft strategy implementation factors, first raised the question of whether knowledge organisations’ operations are actually rather loosely structured and organised, and highly dependent on individuals. Secondly, workspaces could be considered as a canvas that materialises the organisation, its operations and other strategic features. From a strategy implementation perspective, a distinction should, however, be made between workspace reflecting certain strategic aspects or characteristics (for example open communication or innovative culture) and workspace supporting the operations and behaviour needed for the strategy to be implemented and for the organisation as a system to perform well. The former can be achieved by selecting individual features to be expressed in the workspace, while the latter calls for a holistic approach and a profound analysis, for example, of organisation’s knowledge and value creation processes.

Conclusions

The purpose of this paper was to explore whether physical workspaces in the knowledge-intensive organisations interviewed supported and aligned factors needed for successful strategy implementation. In total, 11 strategy implementation frameworks were analysed, and based on these, a framework with 2 + 8 success factors was structured and used in the study (Figure 1).

Current research already covers well the effects of workspace on individual strategy implementation factors such as culture and employee motivation. However, for a strategy to be successfully implemented, an organisational-level perspective and the alignment of all factors are required. In these aspects, this study served two objectives: first, it reflected the holistic concept of strategy implementation on the workspace design and management of the organisations interviewed, and second, the results revealed unused potential of workspaces for supporting strategy implementation. Therefore, the results of this study support the suggestions of Levin (2005) and Kampschroer and Heerwagen (2005) regarding the need for more strategic and holistic approach to workspace design and management.

This study can be considered to be among the first attempts to link organisation’s strategy implementation to physical workspace and to approach the workspace as a platform for organisational-level operations and behaviour. Further research is highly welcome on this holistic, systemic approach to workspace. Research questions are multiple, aiming at deepening our understanding of the impact of workspace on strategy implementation.

The study revealed a rather consistent approach to workspace, drivers for the workspace design and management, and top management perceptions, independent of the organisations’ lines of businesses or strategy. This raises the question of how closely the workspace, as an organisational-level operative platform, is linked to the organisational strategy and strategy implementation, or whether the workspace is even considered as such a platform.

Moreover, the effects of different office concepts on the organisation could be studied closer. In the 25 knowledge-intensive organisations of this study, activity-based workspaces and open floor-plan offices were the most applied concepts, where, by the current definition, employees usually have freedom to choose their locations and where teams and business units may not have dedicated areas. This means that the organisation’s structures and processes designed to implement the strategy are not actively present in the workspace. It might be valuable to have a clearer understanding of how this affects the outcomes of the organisation, such as organisational performance and ability to create value.

One of the motives of the contemporary office concepts is to encourage informal networking and communication among the employees, but it was left unclear if the benefits could be harvested in the organisational level and to what extent. The question of how to link these effects of workspace to the organisational outcomes is still unanswered and requires further endeavours. Even if no consensus is reached, the discussions would highly benefit both the research and practice.

Finally, workspace as a platform for strategy-aligned operations and behaviour is an interdisciplinary question, and to study it, a hierarchy of perspectives might help to understand the dependencies better. When an organisational strategy is considered, the primary perspective could be the way the organisation operates and behaves as a whole to implement it. Therefore, to understand the role of workspace for the organisation and its business strategy, it might be useful to first focus on the organisation as a system and then include other sub-systems, levels of perspectives, and operators in the picture.

Strategy implementation frameworks gather separate and even contradicting aspects of workspace design, usage, and management together in a one holistic frame. Thus, in practice, frameworks could be used as a tool for identifying and balancing expectations and operational goals for physical workspaces. The strategy implementation approach might be particularly useful for organisations operating in large workspaces or separate locations. In organisations that operate in one shared workspace, factors may be supported organically, and there may be less need for intervention.

For the study, Finnish knowledge-intensive organisations of various branches were interviewed and considered as a sample instead of being studied as individual cases. The discussions focused on the drivers, goals and practices for physical workspace design, usage, and management, and interviews were analysed within the strategy implementation context. Observing or evaluating physical workspaces was not included in the study.

Figures

Figure 1.

2 + 8 strategy implementation factors

Figure 2.

Support of workspace design, usage and management for strategy implementation factors

Table 1.

Strategy implementation frameworks analysed for the study

General strategy implementation factors	Categorising models					Interconnecting models				Process models
						7-S			5 P’s
	Noble	Crittenden and Crittenden	Brinkschroeder	Amoo, Hiddlestone-Mumford, Ruzibuka and Akwei	Tawse and Tabesh	Waterman, Peters and Phillips	Star Galbraith	8 S’s Higgins	Pryor, Anderson, Toombs and Humphreys	Okumus	Yang, Sun and Eppler
	1999	2008	2014	2019	2020	1980	2002	2005	2007	2003	2010
Strategy / purpose / performance / outcome						x	x	x	x	x	x
Organisation-related factors
Structures and organisation	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x		x	x
Operations, processes and systems		x				x	x	x	x	x
Other resources				x	x	x		x
Context-related factors
Leadership and management involvement	x		x	x		x		x		x	x
Communication	x	x	x	x	x					x	x
Culture and values		x	x			x		x	x	x
Human-related factors
Human resources					x	x	x	x	x	x	x
Commitment			x		x						x
Control and feedback	x	x	x	x	x		x		x	x

Source: Authors’ own creation

Table 2.

Organisations interviewed

Line of business	Ownership private (17) public (8)	Responsibility of the interviewee + member of Mgmt Board or Board of Directors	Turnover M€ approx. (2019/20/21)	Personnel approx. (2021)	Office concept abw = activity-based workspace (12) open = open plan office (8) trad = traditional office rooms (1) mixed = trad / open / awb (4)
Accounting	Private	Management	25	1,000	open
Advertising	Private	Management	12	100	open
Architecture	Private	Development	na	190	open
Banking	Private	HR	na	na	mixed
Banking and Insurance	Private	Facilities	3,100	11,800	abw
Broadcasting	Public	Strategy	488	2,900	mixed
Consultancy	Public	Management	5	60	abw
Digital services	Private	Management	44	380	abw
Education	Public	Management	55	550	abw
Education	Public	Management	321	4,000	mixed
Energy	Private	Finance	171	240	abw
Energy	Public	HR, Communications	670	380	open
Financing	Public	Management	3,100	370	abw
Forestry and paper	Private	Development	10,200	6,300	abw
Import and retail	Private	Communications	1,300	2,500	abw
Insurance	Private	Management	na	150	open
IT security	Private	HR	152	630	open
Media	Private	HR	130	300	abw
Mobile operator	Private	HR	809	1,350	abw
Municipality	Public	Development	na	3,600	abw
Municipality	Public	Management	na	240	open
Packaging	Private	Management	87	300	trad
Technology	Private	Development	258	1,200	mixed
Technology	Private	Facilities	706	1,300	open
Wholesale and retail	Private	HR	6,100	7,300	abw

Source: Authors’ own creation