Linknote — — 122 words

Architecture — Business — Social science

Open office plans have a surprising effect on communication at work

More on the seemingly negative effects of open plan offices.

When forced to share space, humans behave much like swarms of insects. This has appeared to be true in a range of contexts, the authors note, citing studies involving the US Congress, college dormitories, co-working spaces, and corporate buildings.

However, as far as we’re aware, hornets and wasps are not as psychologically and socially complex as people. For instance, they do not regularly switch between their front-stage self and back-stage self, managing the impression they’re making, per a longstanding theory about humans.

See also: It’s official: Open plan offices are now the dumbest management fad of all time.

Linknote — — 197 words

Architecture — Business — Social science

It’s official: Open plan offices are now the dumbest management fad of all time

New research suggests that open plan offices hinder collaboration rather than help it.

> Previous studies of open plan offices have shown that they make people less productive, but most of those studies gave lip service to the notion that open plan offices would increase collaboration, thereby offsetting the damage.
>
> The Harvard study, by contrast, undercuts the entire premise that justifies the fad. And that leaves companies with only one justification for moving to an open plan office: less floor space, and therefore a lower rent.

My current office is my first open plan one. I am still ambivalent about the benefits or otherwise of open plan. The shift may have contributed to [my feeling that I had lost my mojo](https://duncanstephen.net/how-i-learnt-to-embrace-handwriting-sketching-and-sticking-stuff-on-walls/).

I definitely make heavy use of chat and messaging to communicate with people a couple of desks away. That might not necessarily be a bad thing. But I do miss the gently assertive act of simply walking into someone’s office to get their attention. It all seems a bit more difficult to do that in an open plan office.

Linknote — — 166 words

Architecture — Business

The subtle sexism of your open plan office

When the architect responsible for an open plan office that made women feel watched compared it to being on a nudist beach, he undermined himself.

> “I think it’s like going to a nudist beach. You know, first you’re a little bit worried that everyone’s looking at you, but then you think, hang on, everybody else is naked, no one’s looking at each other,” he told the researchers. “I think that’s what’ll happen, they’ll get on with it.”
>
> The only problem is that sociological research of nudist beaches has shown that people do continue to watch each other–“men in particular, often in groups, look obsessively at women,” the researchers write. This kind of all-glass, no-privacy environment leads to a subtle kind of sexism, where women are always being watched and thus judged on their appearances, causing anxiety for many employees.

See also: [What makes the perfect office?](https://duncanstephen.net/what-makes-the-perfect-office/)