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The purpose of this paper is to determine the effects of environmental factors in open-plan offices with the same characteristics but with different workstation partition heights (1.10, 1.40 and 1.65 m) on perceptual evaluations of office employees.

In this research, the effects of environmental factors on employees’ perceptual evaluations in open-plan offices at the Gölbaşı Region of Ankara were measured with a detailed questionnaire. The research data were obtained from 81 employees who agreed to fill out the questionnaire and who use open-plan offices.

It was found that the office environments with 1.65 m workstation partition heights were more favorably assessed for each of the items of planning and of privacy that form the dependent variables compared to the office environments with 1.10  and 1.40 m partition heights. On the other hand, the office environments with the 1.10 and 1.40 m partition heights were more favorable for lighting items than the 1.65 m partition height office environments. In addition, young employees had a more positive tendency toward the perceptions of environmental factors, including different workstation partition heights in open-plan offices, compared to older employees.

Results of this research provide a fundamental contribution for the impact of various partition heights that have substantial implications on the perceptions of open-plan office environments. At this point, as open-plan offices have important effects on the quality of employees’ work experiences, the influence of various partition heights on the performance of employees should be emphasized in future studies. The diversity of performance (reading comprehension, calculation, design, drawing, etc.) will be an important decision.

The significant contribution of this research is that it provides valid data and makes a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge in open-plan office design.

The purpose of this paper is to explore managers' and employees' opinions regarding privacy in open plan offices and also investigate the relationship between the perception of managers and employees on visual and acoustical privacy in order to provide better design solutions in an open plan office setting.

The research method is a structured interview. The categorized data are analyzed with percentage of frequency distributions and Chi square analysis. A total of 42 subjects were interviewed and separated in two groups as managers and employees.

It was found that lack of privacy still exists as an unsolved negative aspect in open plan offices. Findings indicated that there is a strong desire for employees to change and control their physical working space when both visual and acoustical privacy is needed in an open plan office setting. Another finding is that there is a difference of opinion regarding visual privacy between managers and employees.

The limitation of the paper is that the sample is small and all subjects' occupations are computer‐related. Future studies are needed to further investigate diverse subjects in a larger population. Any future research instrument would have to be different from a structured interview.

Research findings provide valid recommendations to system furniture designers and manufacturers. System furniture design needs to be modular and easily changeable and adjustable for open plan offices.

The significant contribution of this research is that it provided valid data and makes a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge in open plan office design.

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationships between open‐plan measures and the effectiveness of facilities space management. A review of the literature reveals that the relationships have remained largely unsubstantiated empirically. Hence, where emphasis should be in practice, is virtually unknown. A sample of 25 randomly selected open‐plan workplaces was studied and the results were analysed using Spearman’s Rho correlation. Three measures were found to have significant influence in facilities space management: designed capacity by number of staff, flexibility in terms of workstations mobility and density by number of staff per workstation. There was found to be no significant correlation between open‐plan measures and space effectiveness. However, a better appreciation of open‐plan measures in facilities space management, will indirectly influence space effectiveness. The implications of the results are that facilities space managers should systematically evaluate alternative measures and give greater attention to particular aspects of open‐plan.

Research on the physical work environment and employee territorial behavior in the field of organizational behavior is limited. In particular, while the prevalence of territorial behaviors in organizations is not new, little is known about how the physical work environment (e.g. open-plan offices) may influence the enactment, interpretation and reactions to territoriality. The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between the physical environment of work (e.g. open-plan office), employee territorial behaviors (including infringement) and affective environment.

Data were collected by means of in-depth-interviews from 27 participants from two large Australian public organizations involved in recruitment, marketing, consulting and education.

Results revealed that employees’ personalization in the open-plan office is driven by the nature of their tasks, appointment, duration of time spent on their desk, level of adaptation to the open-plan office configurations and the proximity of desks to senior managers, hallways and passers-by. Additionally, affective environment has a critical effect on employee personalization and the enactment and perception of territoriality and infringements in open-plan offices. Additionally, the authors found that the affective environment is dynamic and that employees in open-plan offices experienced emotional contagion (positive and negative).

Due to the demographic make-up of one of the participating organizations, less than a third of participants were male. While the data did not suggest any disparity in the territorial behaviors of male and female, future research should include an even representation of male and female participants. Similarly, the authors did not examine the impact of ethnicity and cultural background on employees’ territoriality. However, given that the workforce is increasingly becoming multicultural, future research should explore how ethnicity might impact the use of space, work processes and productivity in open-plan office. Additionally, scholars should continue to tease out the impact of affective environment (positive and negative) on team processes (e.g. conflict, communication, collaboration and the development of team mental models) in the open-plan office.

The results indicate some practical implications. Noise and distraction are indicated in the results. Therefore, human resource managers and organizational leaders should work with employees to develop some ground rules and norms to curb excessive noise in the open-plan office. Additionally, the authors found in the current study that the affective environment is dynamic and that employees in open-plan offices experienced emotional contagion (positive and negative). Managers should watch out for how individuals react to the prevailing emotions and moods in the open-plan office with the intention of diffusing negative emotions as quickly as possible, for example, by changing the topic under discussion in the open-plan office. The results speak to the need for more active collaboration and engagement between policy makers, workspace architects, designers and employees especially prior to the building of such workspaces.

The results suggest that effective employee interactions in open-plan office may be enhanced by positive emotional contagion and office affective environment.

So far, little is known about the impact of the physical work context (e.g. open-plan offices) on the enactment, interpretation and reactions to territoriality. The current paper explores the connection between the physical environment of work (e.g. open-plan office), employee territorial behaviors (including infringement) and affective environment. The findings demonstrate for the first time and especially in an open-plan office that ownership and personalization of objects and workspaces are more likely to be driven by the amount of time spent at one’s desk, the nature of employees’ appointments and tasks. Additionally, the present research is one of the first to report on affective environment dynamism in the open-plan office.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the effect coefficients of the complex connections between selected open‐plan office and effective facilities space management variables.

Data on offices, management control and effective facilities space management measures were collected through questionnaires administered to 102 facilities space managers of 102 randomly selected open‐plan offices in Sydney.

Some open‐plan attributes were found to have direct impacts on several effective facilities space management variables, while others exhibited indirect effects through management control aspects. In most cases, management control considerably reduced the effect coefficients.

While the study is limited to discrete effective facilities space management aspects of only selected open‐plan commercial offices in Sydney, the research implications though far‐reaching, may not be universally applicable. However, a better understanding of the associations provides directions to where attention would be fruitfully focused in future research replications and practice.

The practical implication of this result is for re‐engineering of work environments to consider aspects of management that invariably moderates and/or intervenes in the relationship of space, people and work process. This paper concludes that, with dedicated management control, the impact of open‐plan on facilities space management may be less extensive.

The paper's utilization of this quantitative approach is novel to understanding the connections between office attributes and effective facilities management. This approach offers a veritable alternative to examining and validating these constructs that are useful to space providers, designers, managers and users in understanding the interactions between space, people and process.

Presents findings from research on open‐plan measures in the determination of facilities space management. The aim of the research is to determine the impact of open‐plan measures on the effectiveness of facilities space management of CBD commercial office buildings ‐ the end‐view being to establish criteria for effective management and re‐engineering of open‐plan workspaces. A review of the literature reveals that this issue has not been definitively investigated. Hence, open‐plan measures remain virtually under‐exploited for the purpose of greater effectiveness of facilities space management. A sample of 102 open‐plan offices was studied, and data analysed using descriptive (such as mean, standard deviation, range) and inferential statistics (such as Spearman’s rho and partial correlations, multiple regression and path analysis). Direct and indirect associations were found between open‐plan and the effectiveness of facilities space management measures. However, some of the relationships were partly and wholly explained by management control measures. Though only multiple regression results are presented here, for reasons of brevity, this study concludes that, in many ways, certain open‐plan measures independently determine the effectiveness of facilities space management. This conclusion serves as a basis for developing criteria for effective management and re‐engineering of open‐plan workspaces.

Presented is a path analysis of causal connections between several open‐plan attributes and discrete effective facilities space management aspects of commercial offices in Sydney. The aim is to use quantitative estimates to demonstrate in structural equations the effect coefficients of the complex connections between selected open‐plan and effective facilities space management variables. Over one hundred open‐plan offices in the Sydney CBD were examined. Some open‐plan attributes were found to have direct impacts on several effective facilities space management variables, while others exhibited indirect effects through management control aspects. In most cases, management control reduced the effect coefficients. This paper concludes that, with dedicated management control, the impact of open‐plan on facilities space management may be less extensive. The implication of this result is for re‐engineering of work environments to consider aspects of management that invariably moderates and/or intervenes in the relationship of space, people and work process.

This paper aims to determine the extent to which employees’ experiences of acoustic comfort, well-being and productivity in open-plan offices are determined by specific characteristics (including demographic information, task characteristics, and personality traits).

A questionnaire was distributed to the occupants of three open-plan office sites and was completed by 166 employees in total.

The results indicated that acoustic comfort in open-plan offices is largely determined by noise sensitivity. Higher noise sensitivity was associated with more negative ratings of acoustical quality, more perceived disturbance by speech and more difficulties in concentration. More negative experiences were also reported by employees with lower interactivity with colleagues.

There is significant inter-individual variability in experiences of acoustic comfort, well-being and productivity in open-plan offices. As such, workplace practitioners should consider acoustic and behavioural solutions for introducing a greater diversity of functional workspaces within the office, so that employees can choose the most suitable working area for their requirements.

Whereas the majority of past acoustics research has been laboratory-based, this study is conducted in real office environments with a representative sample of knowledge workers.

Open-plan office environments are considered to offer workplace productivity benefits because of the opportunities that they create for interaction and knowledge exchange, but more recent research has highlighted noise, distraction and loss of privacy as significant productivity penalties with this office layout. This study aims to investigate if the purported productivity benefits of open plan outweigh the potential productivity penalties.

Previous research suggests that office environments are experienced differently according to the gender and age of the occupier across both open-plan and enclosed configurations. Empirical research undertaken with office occupiers in the Middle East (N = 220) led to evaluations to establish the impact different offices had on perceived productivity. Factor analysis was used to establish five underlying components of office productivity. The five factors are subsequently used as the basis for comparison between office occupiers based on age, gender and office type.

This research shows that benefits and penalties to workplace productivity are experienced equally across open-plan and enclosed office environments. The greatest impact on perceived workplace productivity however was availability of a variety of physical layouts, control over interaction and the “downtime” offered by social interaction points. Male occupiers and those from younger generations were also found to consider the office environment to have more of a negative impact on their perceived workplace productivity compared to female and older occupiers.

The originality of this paper is that it develops the concept of profiling office occupiers with the aim of better matching office provision. This paper aims to establish different occupier profiles based on age, gender and office type. Data analysis techniques such as factor analysis and t-test analysis identify the need for different spaces so that occupiers can choose the most appropriate space to best undertake a particular work task. In addition, it emphasises the value that occupiers place on “downtime” leading to the need for appropriate social space.

The purpose of this paper is to compare different employee perceptions of the success of one change: a move to new offices and an open-plan design.

In sum, 25 interviews were carried out in a New Zealand law firm that six months earlier had moved to new premises.

Contrary to academic and practitioner reports that open-plan offices are disliked, participants appreciated the new office space. A well-planned and highly participative program of change management led to positive perceptions of aesthetic design, open communication, collegiality, egalitarianism and inclusiveness.

Given the small sample used in one organization, the study highlights the need for more research into the processes and outcomes of office space changes.

The roles of communication and culture, in particular, collegiality and egalitarianism, were salient factors in a complex web of causes and consequences in this context of change.