Photo: Morten Larsen

"Space" ace 

The working culture in a space or an office can act as a stress factor and result in low efficiency. That is the view of Heidi Lund Hansen, who has been researching how people work in open-plan offices.

It was no coincidence that Heidi Lund Hansen, MA, aged 36, chose to research the way employees and managers work in open-plan offices. With a background in educational theory and practice and in philosophy, her interest is in understanding the social effects of open-plan offices. Today, she combines the role of consultant with her job as a researcher at COWI and Denmark's Copenhagen Business School.

While writing her thesis on professional identity at COWI, she interviewed many engineers. She noticed that interviewees reacted differently according to who passed outside the glass-panel meeting room where the interviews were conducted.  

Waving to the secretary

If it was a secretary, a wave or a nod would be given; if it was a manager, a glance would be cast over the shoulder. In order to understand why people reacted the way they did, Heidi Lund Hansen resolved to investigate this phenomenon.

Over a three-month period she studied employees from two medium-sized companies working in two different open-plan environments. The results were published in January 2007 as a PhD detailing how employees and managers work in open-plan offices.

Naive claims

"From the outset, I have regarded the claims about open-plan offices as naive. Just because people work in the same room doesn't necessarily entail that they will become proactive. In that respect I've been critical in the approach I've adopted in my PhD," says Lund Hansen.

She points out that the working culture can be a stress factor in open space offices. Some employees perceive brief messages as disturbing and therefore experience low concentration and, correspondingly, low efficiency

Open-plan offices as a resource

Lund Hansen thinks other employees perceive brief interactions as a quick way of getting information. For them, the open-plan office is perceived to be a resource that allows for easy access to colleagues.

Management has to practise openness

She states that the management has to lead the way in open spaces.

"Managers have to review organisational practices and be prepared to scrutinize the organisational culture and working values more closely before they get down to converting existing offices or building from scratch. The management ought to be asking itself: Why are open-plan offices a good idea, and what is the intention when building new types of offices?"

By Christina Tækker, cht@cowi.com 
Published: 25.01.2007





Office like an English club 

Open office landscapes - those large spaces where there are often more than 20 people working - have several names.

In 1962, two German architects coined the term Bürolandschaften, which focused on increased communication and new forms of management. More recently, the English architect Francis Duffy fathered the New Office concept, in which he describes the workplace as like English club, where people encounter one another in relaxed café-like informal settings.

But much has happened since then. Among other things, technology has changed, and our understanding of work and management has changed in pace with the change towards the emerging knowledge society.