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The purposes of this paper are to examine the factors persuasive in building competitive advantage strategies for the co-living and co-working service operators and study the sustainability of the business model for co-living and co-working space.

In this research, a structured literature review of journals, articles, reports, conference proceedings, websites published in recent times and e-newspapers has been conducted. The first step of the research included identifying the relevant literature. For this step, multiple keywords were used in searching for literature on Google.com, Google Scholar, Proquest, Taylor & Francis, Emerald, Elsevier. Upon literature identification, the procured reports were divided into the following three parts: co-living reports, co-working report and others. More than 250 content reports were analyzed, and finally, 105 relevant literature reports from various sources were recorded for further analysis. Focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews were also conducted.

This study concluded after analyzing the literature, focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews that co-working and co-living space would be sustainable business if proper competitive strategies were leveraged, in accordance with the increase in demand over time. This study also serves as a wakeup call for the operators in the co-living and co-working sphere to work on their competitive advantages and differentiate themselves to tap business opportunities. The sustainability of the model by identifying the factors was also emphasized in this study. Further studies of co-living and co-working models should be conducted in the Indian context to analyze the multifarious potential that this new trend of shared accommodation can open up.

This study is based on content analysis, focus group discussion and semi-structured interview analysis. More content and literature were found to be evidenced mostly in Western literature. This is a limitation to the study. This study also had a limitation in including bigger sample of focus groups discussion and interviews; however, the analysis effectively set out a landscape of co-living and co-working space in India.

It is an original research work based on an existing concept and services. As co-living and co-working service operators are cropping up in major cities, enticing the target potential with a platter of services primarily linked with many of the beneficial factors, the researchers in this work attempt to examine the factors persuasive in building the competitive advantage strategies for the co-living and co-working space and the sustainability of these two business models. A ripe market with multifarious possibilities waiting to be tapped with the right plan of action is the need of the hour.

Co-working spaces bundle all real estate services into a package and leverage shared economy trend to create new opportunities for growth. This sector is anticipated to expand significantly due to changes in mobility and office design driven by the development of remote or hybrid work settings. The current study attempts to identify key motivating factors for users in emerging economies in choosing co-working spaces.

Using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology and the self-determination theory framework, a total of 4 criteria-level factors, along with 13 sub-criteria level factors were identified as key motivators for adapting to co-working spaces.

The study highlights a few factors and their relative importance, which could help firms/organizations to start or offer co-working spaces within emerging economies.

The study contributes to literature by advancing the understanding of key motivators for users of co-working spaces within the ambits of emerging economies. In the process, the authors enlist a few factors vis-à-vis their relative importance, which could help firms/organizations to start or offer co-working spaces within emerging markets.

This study aims to illustrate the potential of coworking spaces as one way to achieve optimal workplace arrangements and corporate real estate (CRE) agility, especially for large organizations. The authors suggest understanding coworking spaces from the boundary organization theory and organizational growth model.

This study takes a threefold theoretical approach: conducting a literature review and identifying the gaps in coworking studies for large organizations, applying the organizational boundary theory in tandem with organizational growth models in the context of coworking spaces as a part of the workplace ecology and identifying future research agendas for coworking studies.

This study proposes a conceptual framework of how coworking spaces can be viewed and used as a boundary object throughout the organizational growth phases. Besides, four major future research areas are proposed: case studies and/or empirical evidence of coworking spaces as CRE buffer zones and boundary objects for organizations, coworking space design and different formats of boundary object-infused collaboration, coworking space design and management for its own agility and flexibility and how coworking affects employees’ performance, health and well-being and professional training/mentoring.

For large organizations, there is a clear pressure to rethink CRE to increase workplace agility, flexibility and resilience, much accelerated with the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the effective use of coworking spaces as a part of CRE portfolios will help enhance corporates’ state and ability to reassess, realign and replan their CRE portfolios.

Many existing studies about coworking spaces are based on observations and self-reported justification at an individual level. Whether and how coworking can benefit companies at an organizational level is largely unstudied and worth more attention. This study illustrates a new theoretical understanding of how coworking spaces can be a part of CRE portfolios and bring potential benefits of inter and intraorganizational collaboration throughout the phases of organizational growth.

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.

This paper aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 on office space in Johannesburg. This study further explores the role of changing work practices in the office sector in South Africa because of the pandemic and its impact on future office space use planning and management.

To understand the footprints that the COVID-19 pandemic has left on the office space market in Johannesburg, this study uses semi-structured interviews, which were administered to corporate office users, and a thematic analysis was adopted to understand the views, perspectives and expectations of office users.

The study showed that space users perceive COVID-19-induced remote working as having benefits, opportunities and challenges. A notable shift in office space utilization has emerged, with employees increasingly opting for roles that permit remote work. This newfound flexibility, accommodating both on-site and remote work, often makes working from home more appealing than traditional office environments that may no longer align with users’ preferences for office spaces.

The study is limited to Johannesburg, South Africa, and may not apply to other African markets. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted, and analysis and results were deduced; this may be considered a limitation of this study.

The pandemic’s impact has brought about irreversible changes, compelling policymakers and business leaders to strategize and prepare. This proactive stance aims to prevent avoidable challenges for employees and companies during future pandemics. A thoughtful approach to the post-pandemic world can usher positive changes in the office and property sector. This includes the coexistence of both remote work and on-site working models.

This paper provides valuable insight into some of the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa that are essential for future office space use planning and management. The insights from this study extend the literature and provide novel knowledge based on an office sector in the “global south.”

This paper aims to illustrate the extensive benefits of qualitative data analysis as a rarely undertaken process in post-occupancy evaluation surveys. As a result, there is limited evidence of what occupants say about their buildings, especially for operational parameters, as opposed to how they rate them. While quantitative analyses provide useful information on how workers feel about workplace operational factors, qualitative analyses provide richer information on what aspects of the workplace workers identify as influential to their comfort, well-being and productivity.

The authors analysed 6,938 comments from office buildings worldwide on workers’ perception of workplace operational factors: design, storage, needs, space at desks and storage in their work environments. These factors were analysed based on the buildings’ design intent and use, and the associated comments were coded into positive, negative and balanced comments. The authors used a combination of coding, descriptive analysis, content analysis and word cloud to dissect the comments.

The findings showed that whereas workers rated these operational factors favourably, there were significantly more negative comments about each factor. Also, the Chi-square test showed a significant association (p < 0.01) between the satisfaction scale and the type of comments received for all the operational factors. This means that when a factor is rated high in the satisfaction score (5–7), there were fewer negative and more positive comments and vice versa. The word cloud analysis highlighted vital aspects of the office environment the workers mostly commented on, such as open plan design, natural lighting, space and windows, toilets, facilities, kitchens, meeting room booking systems, storage and furniture.

This study highlights the importance of dissecting building occupants’ comments as integral to building performance monitoring and measurement. These emphasise the richness and value of respondents’ comments and the importance of critically analysing them. A limitation is that only 6,938 comments were viable for analysis because most comments were either incomplete with no meaning or were not provided. This underlines the importance of encouraging respondents to comment and express their feelings in questionnaire surveys. Also, the building use studies questionnaire data set presents extensive opportunities for further analyses of interrelationships between demographics, building characteristics and environmental and operational factors.

The findings from this study can be applied to future projects and facility management to maintain and improve office buildings throughout their life cycle. Also, these findings are essential in predicting the requirements of future workplaces for robust workplace designs and management.

The authors identified specific comments on the performance of workplaces across the globe, showing similarities and differences between sustainable, conventional, commercial and institutional buildings. Specifically, the analysis showed that office workers’ comments do not always corroborate the ratings they give their buildings. There was a significantly higher percentage of negative comments than positive comments despite the high satisfaction scores of the operational factors.

The study assesses user satisfaction of workspaces modified at home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby analyzing the flexibility of modern homes in the twenty-first century in the United Arab Emirates.

Data was collected using a structured online survey from 113 participants about their home office created to accommodate working/studying from home. Analysis of survey revealed the importance of type of residence in affecting satisfaction of functionality and well-being.

The collected demographic variables played a crucial role in affecting satisfaction with various elements, from indoor air quality of the working space to the amount of natural light received by the space. Finally, participants who felt the need to add color and change furniture layout, experienced feelings of productivity, commitment and motivation by working from home. The same participants decided to keep the amended changes to their living spaces, even after they return to working from their offices. The study concludes by presenting implications of this experience on future home designs; thereby offering suggestions of authorities, and designers to produce more flexible and resilient houses.

A relatively small sample with limited professions was considered. Further research recommendations include increasing the sample size to target more categories of the residents of the UAE. Future research can expand the criteria used to evaluate satisfaction and include noise levels as well as accessibility.

The study offers suggestions to authorities and designers to produce more flexible and resilient homes, taking demographics into consideration. Roof gardens, shading devices and privacy needs are crucial elements for the future home.

The research provides enough information to inform designers about the future of space interiors, how well they are configured, serviced and how adaptable they are, in order to enhance user satisfaction.

1. Satisfaction was affected by individual differences.

2. Those who changed furniture layout showed least average satisfaction.

3. Females reported higher satisfaction with indoor air quality and lighting than males.

Satisfaction was affected by individual differences.

Those who changed furniture layout showed least average satisfaction.

Females reported higher satisfaction with indoor air quality and lighting than males.

The purpose of this study is to apply spatial theory to a review of the literature on activity-based working in higher education. Globally, the office concept of activity-based working (ABW) is increasingly implemented in higher education, and scholars contributed to developing empirical explanations of the effects of implementing ABW in higher education. However, the focus on theory building is limited, decreasing the predictability and the understanding of implementing ABW.

The authors developed a theoretical framework by categorizing the empirical findings of earlier accounts by integrating them with Lefebvre’s spatial theory. They conducted a systematic literature review of 21 studies published between 2008 and 2022 that reported on the phenomenon of ABW among higher-education employees.

It remains to be seen whether the implementation of the ABW in higher education is successful in terms of pre-defined goals. The studies investigating academic workplace concepts have led to inconsistent findings that lack an underlying framework. As the ABW concept fails to adequately support academics’ work processes, it is recommended that managers and architects consider their subjective perspectives about the use of space and take the time to understand the users’ fundamental values.

The authors integrated the selected studies with Lefebvre’s spatial theory, and this model includes three perspectives that can explain workers' experiences with ABW. This theoretical framework can assist researchers in gaining a deeper understanding of ABW and support practitioners in implementing it in higher education.

This paper aims to examine the learning gained from the evolving adjustment experiences of co-workers in moving to home-based working during the COVID-19 pandemic and the influence of these experiences on re-adjusting to return to co-working.

Results of a longitudinal qualitative study are reported where a group of co-workers were interviewed on three occasions between 2019 and 2022. Experiences are analysed alongside the adjustment to the remote work model using a boundary management lens.

The main adjustment experiences were in work location, temporal structures, professional and social interactions, and a new adjustment area was identified around family role commitment that emerged in the home-based setting. Boundary management practices were temporal, behavioural, spatial and object-related and evolved with the unfolding of adjustment experiences. A return to using co-working spaces was driven by the need for social interaction and spatial boundaries but affected by the requirement for increased privacy.

This paper will help workplace managers to understand adjustment experiences and develop facilities that will support a positive shared working environment not fulfilled through home-based working.

Although many workers abruptly transitioned to home-based working during the pandemic, this research considers those who would normally choose to work in a community-centred working environment rather than being home-based. As such, their experience of adjustment is of greater interest, particularly in terms of their expectations for shared working spaces.

University faculty, researchers and graduate students are increasingly working out of hotdesks, nonterritorial workspaces available on a “first come first served” basis and cleared of all work and personal possessions at the end of every work session. The aim of this study of the hotdesking experiences of doctoral students in a US public university facility is to identify the themes and coping behaviors associated with hotdesking and examine their implications for campus workspace design and policymaking.

This study uses multiple methods – direct and participant observation of flex workspaces in the study site, semi-structured interviews of doctoral students hotdesking in the study site and archival research of public institutional data.

Study participants work early or late to secure suitable hotdesks, perform important tasks in locations other than the study site, incur co-working space and home office costs, etc. to cope with the themes of uncertainty, lack of control and lack of workspace continuity associated with hotdesking. Workspace reservation systems, storage lockers and workspaces for diverse tasks can improve the on-campus hotdesking experience. Off-campus support such as financial support for setting up and maintaining a home office, subscription to co-working spaces, etc. can facilitate productivity and foster a sense of connection in hotdesk users.

This study contributes evidence that hotdesking doctoral students operate in a hybrid work environment composed of on- and off-campus locations. This study provides original insight that hotdesk users need on- and off-campus workspace support to experience productivity, connection and well-being in a hybrid campus work environment.