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The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences in learning experiences in mono- and intercultural workplace interactions and to address the research question of how employees experience learning in mono- and intercultural interactions.

The author reports and compares the main findings from two samples and 63 in-depth interviews with employees involved either in monocultural interactions or intercultural interactions, namely, 25 and 38 subjects, respectively. The abductive approach was used to analyze the data in interplay between empirical findings and theoretical lens of the job demands-resources (JD-R) model.

Learning was more often emphasized in intercultural interactions than monocultural interactions, which can be associated with the constellation of specific job demands and job resources in mono- and multicultural workplaces. The subjects involved in mono- and intercultural interactions portrayed learning, using slightly different vocabulary.

The research gives some insights about workplace learning experiences and illuminates learning in social interactions and the JD-R model. In particular, it emphasizes the role of work design in promoting learning and identifies, using the JD-R model, job demands and job resources that can relate to learning in mono- and intercultural interactions. The results may contribute to the literature on workplace learning in culturally homogenous or heterogeneous social interactions. Moreover, they shed some new light on organizational learning via mono- and intercultural contact at work. Finally, they draw attention to the potential embedded in intercultural interactions and multicultural workplaces. Yet, the explorative character of the research does not allow for a broader results’ generalization.

The results suggest that job design may be of vital importance in stimulating learning at work. Thus, organizations should enable social interactions of their employees, especially intercultural ones, which are likely associated with more learning. Furthermore, to enhance workplace learning, they need to provide more organizational resources and support via HR interventions the development of personal resources of their staff to help individuals to deal with job demands and reduce strain, which impedes employee learning.

By applying the theoretical lens of the JD-R model to the analysis, the author exposes differences in learning experiences in mono- and intercultural interactions. The specific job demands (cultural differences and adaptation, the necessity to speak a foreign language) and resources (learning opportunities) inherent in multicultural workplaces can be perceived as a trigger of workplace learning.

The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of colocation on office workers' perception of workplace design and interaction freedom in organizations.

The study was conducted at six different departments of an office organization that moved from geographically dispersed office buildings to one office building. The pre‐move data were collected three to six months before the move, and the post‐move data were collected almost one year after the move through questionnaire surveys. Out of 284 workers, 169 office workers filled out the questionnaire in the pre‐move survey, and 175 filled out the questionnaire in the post‐move survey.

Based on statistical analyses of the data, the study found that colocation did not help improve office workers' overall perception of interaction freedom in the organization, but it helped eliminate perceptual disparities concerning interaction freedom among its different departments. The study also found that office workers' perception of workplace design support for interaction and workstation location were strong predictors of their perception of interaction freedom in the organization. Overall, the findings of the study indicated that the purpose of colocation might be defeated if organizational behavior and culture were not modified simultaneously to promote workers' perception in support of interaction freedom.

The study considered only one type of colocation that involved bringing people of different organizational units together from geographically dispersed places to one place. Therefore, these findings cannot be generalized for all other types of colocation.

The findings of the study are important for corporate real estate (CRE) strategists and organizational leaders who are actively considering colocation as a strategy to improve interaction and team effectiveness in the organization.

The study investigates different mechanisms involving the effects of colocation on office workers' perception of workplace design and interaction freedom in organizations; and identifies important distinctions to consider for achieving the benefits of colocation in terms of face‐to‐face interactions in the workplace.

Over one million individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will be entering adulthood and attempting to cultivate fulfilling, meaningful life experiences. These young adults with ASD represent Generation A. The workplace will be a major element in cultivating fulfilling lives for Generation A. Social interaction is an integral component for functioning within most postsecondary and occupational settings. It is necessary to understand the interaction between autistic adults and organizations to understand potential social and behavioral deficits. The workplace is inherently a social place. Understanding both formal and informal social information in the workplace may be critical to successful job performance. Fit, particularly person–organization fit, is used to address this social nature of the workplace. Understanding this interaction helps provide a means for crafting both individual and organizational interventions which support autistic adults in the workplace. This chapter provides an analysis of interventions that support those with ASD in the workplace. It is proposed that these interventions will help create a more supportive work environment for those with ASD. As important, it is proposed that the accommodations for those with ASD are reasonable for any organization seeking to improve both satisfaction and performance for all its employees. By addressing these issues, organizations have the potential to create a more satisfying workplace for all workers, not just those in Generation A.

Building on work that explores the relationship between individual beliefs and ability to recognize discrimination (e.g., Kaiser and Major, 2006), we examine how an adherence to beliefs about gender essentialism, gender egalitarianism, and meritocracy shape one’s interpretation of an illegal act of sexual harassment involving a male supervisor and female subordinate. We also consider whether the role of the gendered culture of engineering (Faulkner, 2009) matters for this relationship. Specifically, we conducted an online survey-experiment asking individuals to report their beliefs about gender and meritocracy and subsequently to evaluate a fictitious but illegal act of sexual harassment in one of two university research settings: an engineering department, a male-dominated setting whose culture is documented as being unwelcoming to women (Hatmaker, 2013; Seron, Silbey, Cech, and Rubineau, 2018), and an ambiguous research setting. We find evidence that the stronger one’s adherence to gender egalitarian beliefs, the greater one’s ability to detect inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment while gender essentialist beliefs play no role in their detection. The stronger one’s adherence to merit beliefs, the less likely they are to view an illegal interaction as either inappropriate or as sexual harassment. We account for respondent knowledge of sexual harassment and their socio-demographic characteristics, finding that the former is more often associated with the detection of inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment at work. We close with a discussion of the transferability of results and policy implications of our findings.

This study aims to develop the understanding of learning processes related to the new ways of interacting in the enforced digital workplace over time.

A multiple, longitudinal case study of knowledge-based workers in three firms located in Sweden has been conducted from March 2020 to March 2023. In total, 89 interviews with 32 employees in three knowledge-based firms have been collected.

The study shows how the intricate interaction between rules and norms for interaction and work must be renegotiated as well as un- and relearned when the physical work environment no longer frames the work context. Furthermore, technology can be viewed as both an enable and a barrier, that is, technology has enhanced collaboration between organizational members yet also created social difficulties, for example, related to communication and interaction. The study emphasizes that individuals learned through trial and error. That is, they tried behaviors such as translating social interactions" to a digital arena, appraised the outcomes and modified the practices if the outcomes were poor.

The present study does have several limitations. First, it is based on interviews with respondents within three organizations in Sweden. To broaden and deepen the understanding of both organizational and learning, future studies can contribute by studying other contexts as well as using a mixed method approach in other countries.

Results from the study can provide a practical understanding of how the rapid change from working at the office to working from home using digital technologies can be understood and managed.

Contributions include combining interaction order and un- and relearning among organizational employees. This insight is important given that the rapid digital transformation of our society has changed how work is performed and how the future workplace will be both structured and organized.

The purpose of this article is to advance the understanding of expatriates' psychological attachment toward both their parent company and its foreign subsidiary by highlighting how workplace friendships enhance the process of adjustment for expatriates and how these effects on adjustment subsequently translate into expatriates' dual commitment.

Hypotheses were tested using a sample of 187 expatriates, working in managerial positions, in subsidiaries of multinational corporations, all of whom were assigned expatriates. Serial multiple indirect effects were tested.

The results indicated that the relationship between workplace friendships and interaction adjustment was supported, but the relationship between workplace friendships and work adjustment was not supported. The serial indirect effects of international adjustment and work adjustment on the relationship between interaction adjustment and expatriates' dual commitment were supported.

This study seeks to fill a gap in the research literature on expatriates by focusing on the issue of workplace friendships and expatriates' dual commitment. The findings help bolster the literature on relational schemas in that expatriates' workplace friendships establish scripts for expatriates' expected outlines of adjustment in work domains. This study also provides insights relevant to the literature on social interaction and adjustment, as the findings support our theory that expatriate commitment is not directly contingent on workplace friendships but rather on the mediating roles of both interaction adjustment and work adjustment.

This paper aims to find a measurement model with better evidence of validity, with data extracted from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). To test a parsimonious model in which dispositional and workplace context characteristics are predictors of informal learning behaviors (ILBs).

The authors performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to improve the fit of the PIAAC data measurement model. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the prediction of ILBs by one dispositional variable (Readiness to Learn) and two workplace context variables (Autonomy and Interaction in the Workplace).

A measurement model emerged with 18 items divided into four factors. The three antecedent variables predicted ILBs. Interaction in the workplace resulted in higher scores, and workplace autonomy resulted in lower scores.

The small number of items for ILBs prevented a more detailed exploration of predictors of different types of these behaviors. ILBs can be stimulated by policies that promote readiness to learn and that encourage the design of environments that require worker interactions and autonomy.

Few studies on ILBs in the workplace have investigated the prediction of dispositional and contextual antecedents based on a theoretical model. The findings herein were obtained using a diverse sample of countries, occupations and generations, allowing better generalization. The importance of interpersonal relationships in the workplace for predicting ILBs was emphasized.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether researchers from different disciplines have different requirements for workplaces.

A literature review aimed to understand the academic workplace requirements of different disciplines. The empirical data were gathered by a national survey conducted in Finland. Open-ended questions accumulated answers, which were analysed and clustered.

The analysis implies that the majority of researchers in all the disciplinary categories required places that support both concentration and interaction. When comparing those researchers who asked for a place that only supports either concentration or interaction, the majority of those working in soft-pure disciplines required spaces to support concentration and those in soft-applied disciplines required spaces to support interaction. Researchers from hard disciplines – both applied and pure – consider places supporting concentration or interaction to be equally important.

The weakness of this study is the generalisability, as this survey was conducted in Finland. The analysis emphasised diversity between disciplines without analysing diversity within disciplines.

Facilities and real estate managers can gain a deeper understanding of the academics’ workplace requirements, which in turn can help them to enhance workplace support of productivity at the same time as cutting real estate costs.

This study contributes to the body of research on academic office design.

This qualitative study aims to understand young professional newcomers' experiences of communication processes in membership negotiation in their first workplace after graduation.

Instead of a one-time interview, the participants were contacted five to ten times during the three to ten months, beginning when they entered the workplace. The data were analyzed using a constant comparative method.

Three communication processes during membership negotiation were identified: developing reciprocity, seeking and perceiving acceptance and becoming an active member. To experience membership, newcomers need to achieve acceptance and engage in reciprocal communication in early interaction situations with managers and coworkers.

Only the experiences of newly graduated newcomers were studied. This study illustrates the communication processes and social interaction evolving in membership negotiation during newcomers' entry.

Organizations need to re-evaluate their short orientation programs to support membership negotiations in workplace communication.

By recognizing the communication processes during membership negotiation, the practices of newcomers' entry can be developed to support the membership development.

This study contributes to membership negotiation by showing how newcomers join the flow of membership negotiation through the processes of developing reciprocity, seeking and perceiving acceptance and becoming an active member.

Organizational change eliciting negative outcomes might play a role in the development of workplace bullying. The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and the interaction effect of two particular negative outcomes of organizational change, such as high workload and job insecurity, on workplace bullying.

Participants in the study were 134 Italian workers who had just experienced an organizational change. A multiple regression analysis, using the stepwise method, was conducted to test for whether workload, job insecurity, and their interactions predicted workplace bullying.

Results show that high level of workload is related to workplace bullying; job insecurity is not directly related to workplace bullying; the interaction between high workload and job insecurity enhanced the risk for workplace bullying. In particular, when the level of job insecurity is high there is a stronger relationship between workload and bullying, compared to when the level of job insecurity is low.

The cross-sectional design applied does not allow inference on the causal relationships between the predictors and outcomes.

In order to decrease the occurrence of bullying, managers should avoid that employees experience high workload after organizational change by carefully designing the reengineering process. Additionally, they should try to reduce, as far as possible, employee perceptions of job insecurity.

The focus of the study is on the “survivors” after organizational change and on particular interaction of workplace bullying’s causes that could extremely enhance the risk of the phenomena.