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This paper aims to explore how users respond to office design through their use of space. Intentions for how office spaces should be used can be not only understood as sociomaterial scripts that are inscribed into the architecture by designers but also communicated through organisational change processes. The paper elaborates on how users de-script office spaces, that is, how they respond to these scripts through use.

The paper draws on a case study of an office design intervention in a public organisation. Taking a sociomaterial approach, the paper uses the concepts of scripting and de-scripting to analyse the data.

The findings show that users subscribe to, repair, resist or re-script design scripts. This suggests that users can enact agency in use through creative acts of appropriation. Further, both materiality and user participation play equivocal roles in user responses.

The paper is based on a single case study where the design process was studied retrospectively. The case is regarded as typical of contemporary office design processes, but more studies that follow projects from design into use are needed.

This suggests that design solutions should be better adapted to the work practices instead of applying generic concepts to specific situations and that design and use should be understood as overlapping processes.

The originality of this study lies in linking aspects of the design process with user responses and in taking a sociomaterial approach to examine design and use.

This paper addresses the concept of automated library systems of the 1980s as a marriage of traditional bibliographic transaction processing applications and those now emerging under the rubric of the advanced office system. This is the concept of CESS—the Comprehensive Electronic Service System for the library or information center. The basis of CESS will be a distributed data processing system eventually linking the local library, via computer to computer communication, to institutional parent, regional and national level systems and their associated services. Functional application distribution for this system is discussed with Computer Consoles, Inc., Office Power and Prime Computer, Inc., Prime Office Automation System (POAS) used to show the office automation capabilities and their integration aspects with online bibliographic systems for the library. Present and near term solutions to creating CESS concept systems are presented.

There is lack of knowledge about how movements and interaction within offices are related to the work activities and the premises. This paper aims to develop such knowledge and to develop analytic methods for differentiating office buildings regarding their usefulness to different kind of office activities and sectors.

The empirical data were collected from several comparative case studies. The spatial configuration of each office is analysed with Space syntax‐methods. The organisation and work activities of each office and the use of the spatial system are surveyed by means of interviews, observations and private logbooks and questionnaires.

The spatial configuration influences the relation between movements and actual interaction, and, as most interaction occurs at one's workstation, which people will be interacting with whom. The building's spatial influence is largest on intra‐group movement. The spatial behaviour – the pattern of occupation and movement of the office workers – is on an average level quite the same for different organisations.

The project is so far concentrated on the main work category in many large organisations, the handling officer, a clerk handling tasks individually more or less routinely. The sample of office concepts, or spatial forms, is also restricted so far.

The findings are of great interest for architects in designing offices in order to be both well functioning for a specific organisation and robust in permitting changes of different kind. For the real estate owners the knowledge will facilitate defining the market and for the users this will strengthen the potential to express the demands.

This research project is focused on spatial configuration and interaction, unlike the most of the studies about the individual workstations.

Based on a case study of the new Swiss Re headquarters in Munich, Germany, this paper outlines key design and planning principles integral to achieving an outstanding project result, both from the functional and the architectural point of view. A special focus is given to various simulation techniques which in very early planning stages helped to evaluate important planning options and which were instrumental to the project’s success. The new headquarters of Swiss Re Germany were inaugurated in winter 2002. The consultancy firm of the author was extensively involved in the project.

The ability of employees to handle work-related demands, structure their own work and manage workflow is highly important in today’s complex organisations. This paper aims to explore the impact of the office environment on employees’ ability to control interaction, structure their own work processes and handle work-related demands. The focus is on the influence of the physical premises, especially on how work within private, privileged and public work zones may affect perceptions of, and possibilities to control, customer interactions and other work-related demands.

The paper is based on a qualitative case study of a Norwegian finance corporation. The core method was semi-structured interviews, carried out with 29 employees and managers. The triangulated research design included observations, field notes, user logs and document analyses.

The findings indicate that, in a customer-centred work process, separate zones for customer-related work and for internal work provide employees with increased scope to handle work demands and perceive control in their work. Zoning helped structure the workflow and provided employees with new resources in customer interaction and other work tasks.

Broadening the focus on environmental control and work-related demands from individual coping to social interaction may provide more insight into factors influencing work processes and employee well-being in emerging workplace concepts.

This paper aims to explore the literature on office design approaches (ODAs) in relation to employee health. The overall goal is to facilitate the practical use and theoretical development of design approaches to healthy offices.

A scoping review of 7,432 papers collected from 4 electronic databases and 5 scientific journals resulted in the selection of 18 papers for content analysis.

Various ODAs relating to building design features and health were identified. The findings highlight challenges for this emergent field, including a paucity of literature on ODAs, a lack of definitions of health and healthy offices, ambiguous design strategies and a lack of a holistic ODA.

ODAs are potentially valuable resources but an under-considered topic for healthy office development. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first scoping review to map and compare different design approaches in the context of office design and its main contribution is in encouraging researchers and practitioners to bring a salutogenic and holistic perspective to their design approaches.

This purpose of this paper is to present the research findings of a Post‐Occupancy Evaluation of new ways of working in the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology and the lessons that can be learned from this particular case in connection with research findings from similar cases.

The paper is based on an internet survey among 266 daily users, additional interviews with decision makers and other participants involved in the implementation process, analyses of documents and personal observations.

The new office plan scores highly on possibilities of meeting other people. Work spaces are considered to be functional, but employees also reported a lack of spaces suited for confidential (telephone) conversations and insufficient visual and auditory privacy. Employees are unable to control sufficiently the climate of their direct work environment and the way the environment looks. Security of the workplaces is rated below average. People want more rooms equipped with doors, and doors that can be locked. Another important complaint was lack of personal and collective filing and storage possibilities.

The paper focuses on office space; because of limited time and budget restrictions educational space was not included in this building‐in‐use study. There was no opportunity to conduct a zero measurement ex ante. Long‐term effects on use and experience are not known yet, nor the effects of improvements that are being implemented this year.

The results can be used to support decision makers in implementing new office concepts in general and in particular in an academic setting, ex post or ex ante.

Much has been written about new ways of working, but research on this topic in academic settings is scarce.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how Lean office planning and implementation take place in a Brazilian regulatory agency and to investigate the adjustments needed for its implementation.

A longitudinal case study was conducted. Interview was the main source of evidence. Between September and October 2012, data about the planning phase were collected; between April and May 2015, Lean office implementation was investigated. Altogether, five employees of the agency were interviewed.

The agency assumed its mission as value for the user, establishing control process, evaluating and improving processes to achieve perfection and recognising its weakness in a continuous improvement culture. Planning and implementation of Lean office in the regulatory agency followed the main recommendations in the literature. However, adjustments were necessary in accordance with the particularities of the public institution.

Owing to the nature of this study, no generalisation was possible. Moreover, interviews with managers were about both Lean planning, which has taken place in the past, and Lean implementing, which is still running; thus, some information may be abstruse.

It was possible to list the main adjustments needed for planning and implementing the Lean office in the public agency and some are applicable for other public administration bodies.

Lean office studies are mainly related to private organizations, but this paper demonstrates that their fundamentals are preserved in public service, and thus it proved that Lean thinking may be applied to the public administration. It also raised a series of questions for future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of activity-based working (ABW), an office design and management system that has emerged in the past 20 years. It investigates its manifest and underlying agendas with a view to determining its degree of cost management focus and scientific management foundations.

The paper uses historical and website analysis methodologies for investigating historical office management philosophies and practices, as well as contemporary office design and management philosophies and related ABW practices and discourse. These are examined through the theoretical lenses of governmentality and impression management theories.

Despite a rhetoric of staff empowerment, ABW’s dominant agenda is overhead cost reduction and operating cost management. This reflects scientific management principles of early twentieth-century office design and management. Cost efficiencies and productivity emerge as key ABW output foci. While ABW adopters and advocates present ABW as a desirable staff satisfaction and operations facilitator, the cost agenda nonetheless commands centre stage.

Accounting research into the office and its processes is much needed. This has been largely neglected in favour of line management and factory floor costing and accountability systems. In a world dominated by service industries, the office as a centre of organisational and economic activity merits researchers’ greater attention.

Contemporary office design and functioning developments merit greater recourse to and acknowledgement of their historic roots. Then, practitioners can better design and implement systems that build on past knowledge and learnings. While such innovations as ABW may carry potential for improved organisational performance, care is needed with respect to their balancing of agendas and suitability for their institutional and cultural environments.

Organisational work has become a dominant part of social life in most economies today. Such innovations as ABW must be considered in terms of the societal culture into which they are introduced: how they reflect and adapt to that culture and what impacts they may also have on the culture itself. This includes dimensions such as organisational and self-control, as well as personal and organisational accountability.

This study presents itself as one of the very few refereed research studies of ABW currently available in the accounting, management or property research literatures. It also represents one of the very few studies of the office in the accounting research literature internationally.

The aim of this research is to determine whether the type of office environment has an impact on satisfaction with the office environment and productivity support.

Three office types that are most common in The Netherlands were distinguished: individual and shared room offices, combi offices and flex offices. 11,799 respondents filled out a questionnaire measuring satisfaction with the work environment and its contribution to productivity.

Regression analysis was used to investigate whether these factors were influenced by office type. Results show that office type is a significant predictor. While in combi and flex offices people can choose to work at diverse workspaces, people evaluate productivity support, concentration and privacy less positive than people working in individual and shared room offices. In combi offices, but not in flex offices, people are more satisfied with communication than in individual and shared room offices.

Nevertheless, satisfaction with the organization explains the most variance with regard to satisfaction with the office environment and productivity support.

In The Netherlands, there are a lot of office buildings with a combi or flexible office concept. The large dataset on which the comparison is based, is a real plus for the research.