Workplace Design: A New Managerial Imperative

The nature of work is changing: it is more global more team-based, and increasingly dependent on information technology. Academic researchers have examined the effect of these changes upon organizational management, technologies, and cultures, but little attention has been paid to the physical environment in which such work is done. Managers, meanwhile, are struggling to cope with the many challenges of designing workspaces to best meet the needs of their organizations, employees, and other stakeholders. This introduction to the special issue builds on existing research in workplace design to put forth a model that describes the various influences on and tensions encountered in workplace design. It highlights the theoretical gaps where additional work is needed to understand the role of and choices made in workplace design for organizational performance. In the process, it emphasizes the contributions of the seven articles in this special issue.