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This study aims to examine the key components to facilitate flexible work arrangement (FWA) and the issues and challenges arisen in preparing the workplace for FWA during Covid-19, and to recommend better approach of FWA implementation in workplace.

This study adopted extensive literature review and case studies approach using interviews and observations to determine the key components to facilitate FWA and the issues and challenges arisen in preparing the workplace for FWA during Covid-19, and to recommend better approach of FWA implementation in workplace. Three offices that owning FWA experience during Covid-19 and featuring flexible workspace concepts, elements and layouts in Klang Valley, Malaysia were chosen as case studies.

Findings have suggested that there are four components required to form flexible workspace for FWA adoption, such as open plan workspace design, task-oriented space, hot desking policy and IT infrastructure. Interestingly, the interview findings do not support the idea that the flexible furniture can facilitate FWA; instead, they believe that versatile, acoustical and aesthetical furniture may be installed when necessary. Among the issues and challenges faced were rearranging and designing open office plan layout, hot desk relocation and reconfiguration of spaces where people may congregate. Lastly, this research recommends that innovative planning software and tools, smart technology and apps, modern IT technology and infrastructure, and digital apps can be introduced to the workplace to help FM manage and monitor the facilities operations, workplace situations and occupancy rates.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, FWA such as “Work From Home” and remote working have become the mainstream in the workplace, affecting how the workplace looks and feels as flexible working is fundamentally related to the flexible workspace. From Facilities Management (FM) perspective, FWA is the biggest consequence of Covid-19, but it also presents opportunities and certain challenges to incorporate a new office environment and employees’ needs in terms of FWA into the corporate culture.

Meetings with colleagues are an essential activity in workplace collaboration. The iterative nature of collaborative work demands spaces that team members can access quickly and easily. Creating suitable meeting spaces will become more critical if the hybrid work model continues and the workplace environment becomes the hub for face-to-face collaborative time, learning and training. Workspace and fit-out is expensive so it is crucial that the investment in meeting spaces supports employees’ collaboration activities.

This paper presents a case study of a corporate organisation undertaken in New Zealand to investigate how employees from two business units use their workspace to collaborate within their own team and across other teams in their organisation. The study uses ethnographic techniques, including participant observation and in-depth face-to-face interviews.

The findings show that the frequency and nature of small group work in collaboration was underestimated in the initial planning of the new workspace. Although participants found the design and fit-out of the formal meeting rooms supportive of collaborative work, the meeting rooms were in high demand, and it was difficult to find a room at short notice. The breakout spaces were confusing because they lacked key design attributes identified by the participants as conducive to small group work. Design shortfalls together with fit-out features perceived as supportive of collaborative work are identified.

The research reports on employees’ perceptions and experiences across two functionally diverse business units, reflecting their different needs and concerns.

To assess which partnerships were most critical during the recovery planning process following Hurricanes Maria and Irma. We discuss the roles and impact of different types of partners, barriers and facilitators to partnerships and lessons in collaboration during the development of the economic and disaster recovery plan for Puerto Rico.

The Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) was tasked with assisting the Puerto Rican government with an assessment of damages from Hurricanes Maria and Irma and the development of the Recovery Plan. During the process, a small team compiled and coded a database of meetings with non-HSOAC partners. The team was divided into sector teams that mirrored FEMA’s Recovery Support Functions. Each sector completed two surveys identifying high impact partners and their roles and contributions, as well as barriers and facilitators to partnerships.

A total of 1,382 engagements were recorded across all sectors over seven months. The most frequently identified high impact partners were federal and Puerto Rican governmental organizations partners. NGOs and nonprofits were noted as key partners in obtaining community perspective. Sector teams cited a lack of trust and difficulty identifying partners as barriers to partner engagement. Given the expedited nature of disaster response, establishing partnerships before disasters occur may help facilitate community input. Early networking, increased transparency and defining roles and responsibilities may increase trust and effectiveness among partnerships.

To our knowledge, this is one of the few studies that quantifies and illustrates the partnerships formed and their contributions during recovery planning, and lessons learned.

The purpose of this study is to analyse perceived physical and social isolation and how they are linked in various places of work.

A nationwide study was conducted involving 3,352 Estonian office workers in spring 2021. Physical isolation was measured in terms of what proportion of time a person works away from co-workers (0%, 1%–25%, 26%–50%, 51%–75%, more than 75%). Social isolation diverged into two factors: lack of contacts and lack of meaningful connections. The different places of work the authors considered in the study included working from home with and without a dedicated room and different types of offices (private office, shared-cell office, activity-based office and open-plan offices of various sizes).

The results show that the negative consequences of physical isolation in the form of perceiving social isolation start to show when a person works 51% of the time or more away from others. However, the authors revealed the dual nature of social isolation in that when a person experiences a lack of contacts, the connections they do have with their colleagues are actually more meaningful.

The originality of the study comes from the fact that the authors uncovered the paradoxical nature of social isolation. This reveals itself in various places of work depending on the conditions at home and the type of office. Therefore, the authors move away from the simplified distinction of home vs office and take into account the level of physical isolation (what amount of time a person actually works away from colleagues).

The purpose of this study is to offer a checklist that can be used for both creating and evaluating digital collections, which are also sometimes referred to as data sets as part of the collections as data movement, suitable for computational use.

The checklist was built by synthesising and analysing the results of relevant research literature, articles and studies and the issues and needs obtained in an observational study. The checklist was tested and applied both as a tool for assessing a selection of digital collections made available by galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) institutions as proof of concept and as a supporting tool for creating collections as data.

Over the past few years, there has been a growing interest in making available digital collections published by GLAM organisations for computational use. Based on previous work, the authors defined a methodology to build a checklist for the publication of Collections as data. The authors’ evaluation showed several examples of applications that can be useful to encourage other institutions to publish their digital collections for computational use.

While some work on making available digital collections suitable for computational use exists, giving particular attention to data quality, planning and experimentation, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, none of the work to date provides an easy-to-follow and robust checklist to publish collection data sets in GLAM institutions. This checklist intends to encourage small- and medium-sized institutions to adopt the collection as data principles in daily workflows following best practices and guidelines.

Despite the potential benefits of open government data (OGD) and its recent adoption by many governments, little is known about monitoring its use by the public. This paper aims to address the knowledge gap by empirically examining OGD usage in Tanzania.

A field survey design was used to gather quantitative data from 288 people in seven regions of Tanzania to facilitate an analysis of the determinants of users’ behavioural intention and use behaviour of OGD. Guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model, the study analysed the tendencies of these determinants on the use of the OGD portal.

The results show that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions affect users’ acceptance and use of the OGD portal. The results suggest that OGD initiatives should focus more on their potential applications than publication. It is important to monitor and evaluate OGD use and the conditions that allow it to continue. By linking OGD with other government initiatives, governments can build strategies, capacity and social awareness. During the development of OGD platforms for extensive reuse, new data technologies like the semantic web should be considered.

Hitherto, research has underlined the significance of OGD initiatives at large and that studies in developing countries are scarce, especially that probe the uptake of the current efforts. The present study seeks to plug this research gap by examining the use of OGD in Tanzania’s context.

Tehran’s health-care system is growing, yet it lacks emergency planning procedures. The premise of this study is that the urban environment around a hospital is just as robust as the hospital itself. This study aims to look at hospital resilience in an urban setting to see where it may be improved to keep the hospital operational during a disaster.

The urban resilience (UR) of Amir-Alam Hospital was analyzed in this study using a customized version of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s City Resilience Profiling Tool. The 34 indications were broken down into five categories.

The result revealed that the hospital’s UR score was 51.75 out of 100, indicating medium resilience. The results of this study enable the decision-makers to determine what measures they may take to improve the hospital’s resilience in terms of its surrounding urban context.

The originality of this research is based on the surrounding urban environment’s resilience as an integral part of hospital resilience.

The Purpose of this paper is to identify statistical relationships between visual environment and occupant productivity. Visual environment is one of the most important indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters, and it directly impacts occupant productivity in offices. The literature outlines the significance of the impact. Still, there is a lack of investigation, statistical analysis and inter-relationships between the independent variables (IEQ factors), especially in the hot and arid climate.

This study presents a research study investigating the effects and shows statistical relationships between IEQ on occupant comfort and productivity. The study was conducted in the Middle East, and data was collected for 12 months. It used the response surface analysis to perform analysis.

This study outlined seven unique relationships highlighting the recommended range, inter-dependencies. Results include that illumination has maximum effect on visual comfort and temperature, daylight having direct influence and relative humidity, wall type next to the seat and kind of workspace also impact visual comfort and productivity. These findings would help to improve occupant comfort and productivity in office buildings. It is recommended to include results and recommendations on design guidelines for office buildings.

This study presents the unique effects of non-visual IEQ parameters on visual comfort and productivity. This investigation also provides a unique method to develop the statistical relationship between various indoor environmental factors and productivity in different contexts and buildings.

This paper aims to explore how the scientific literature and company reports have addressed inclusive workplace design and strategies to date.

This paper adopts a scoping review to answer the following question: To what extent is inclusion present in workplace design and related strategies? An analysis of 27 scientific papers and 25 corporate social responsibility reports of the highest-ranked companies in the Great Place to Work global ranking disentangles the main aspects related to workplace design and strategies for promoting inclusion.

This paper opens avenues for four macro-categories of diversity (psycho-physical aspects; cultural aspects; socio-economic conditions; and ability, experience and strengths) to support the development of inclusive workplace design and strategy. Besides, multiple spatial scales emerged as material and immaterial elements of the workplace encountering inclusion and diversity.

Nowadays, the workforce is becoming more diverse. Although diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) has become key to many organizations, it remains unclear how DE&I principles are applied in workspace design and strategies. This scoping review provides a novel perspective on the topic by integrating scientific knowledge and practice-based approaches which still address this matter independently.

In order to address the gender divide in technology entrepreneurship, we explore how different national contexts impact policies and policy implementation. We investigate how transnational concerns (macro level) about women’s low participation in (technology) entrepreneurship are translated and implemented amongst actors at the meso level (technology incubators) and understood at the micro level (women tech entrepreneurs).

We adopt gender institutionalism as a theoretical lens to understand what happens in the implementation of gender equality goals in technology entrepreneurship policy. We apply Gains and Lowndes’ (2014) conceptual framework to investigate the gendered character and effects of institutional formation. Four countries represent different levels of gender equality: high (Norway and Sweden), medium (Ireland) and low (Israel). An initial policy document analysis provides the macro level understanding (Heilbrunn et al., 2020). At the meso level, managers of technology business incubators (n = 3–5) in each country were interviewed. At the micro level, 10 female technology entrepreneurs in each country were interviewed. We use an inductive research approach, combined with thematic analysis.

Policies differ across the four countries, ranging from women-centred approaches to gender mainstreaming. Macro level policies are interpreted and implemented in different ways amongst actors at the meso level, who tend to act in line with given national policies. Actors at the micro level often understand gender equality in ways that reflect their national policies. However, women in all four countries share similar struggles with work-life balance and gendered expectations in relation to family responsibilities.

The contribution of our paper is to (1) entrepreneurship theory by applying gendered institutionalism theory to (tech) entrepreneurship, and (2) our findings clearly show that the gendered context matters for policy implementation.