Faculty of Science and Engineering: COMP3780 Open Office Report

This report delves into the concept of open office environments, examining their historical evolution and impact on management practices within business organizations. It explores the advantages, such as enhanced employee interaction and cost-effectiveness, and disadvantages, including potential for distractions and conflicts. The report also analyzes how information flows within open office settings and how it affects organizational culture. It considers the influence of open office design on team dynamics, conflict resolution, and overall organizational performance, drawing on relevant research and literature to provide a comprehensive overview of this contemporary workplace model. The assignment is based on the principles discussed in Chapter 3 of the textbook, focusing on managing the external environment and organizational culture.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Name of the student
Name of University
Author note

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Introduction
Organizational culture plays an important role in determining the extent to which a
business organization will be able to successfully achieve its organizational targets and goals.
The organizational culture of a business organization involves the set of beliefs, values and
principles that control the attitude and behavior of the employees and other members of the
organization. The modes of communication used by the different members of the
organization for the purpose of coordinating amongst themselves and engaging in the
fulfillment of organizational targets is also determined by the efficiency of the organizational
culture. In this regard, it may be said that the changing business environments throughout the
world, has facilitated the transformation of organizational cultures that are generally present
within the scope of business organizations. The essay ill further focus upon the concept of
open office environments. For this purpose, the history of such working environments will be
discussed along with the impact it has had on the management practices of business
organizations. The advantages and disadvantages of this form of office environment will also
be discussed with respect to the physical layout.
Discussion
The concept of open office environments entails the a system where there are no
closed walls or fixed cubicles for the employees and other members of the organization to
work in. The primary purpose of the development of the open office environments is to
provide the employees with a free space and prevent their confinement to drab and
uninspiring office spaces (Evans and Johnson 2000). However, there are several challenges
pertaining to the incorporation of such an organizational culture with open office working
environments. For the analysis of such challenges, it is essential to evaluate the development
of the open environment working spaces.

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History of the Open Office Environment
Initially the concept of open working environments was confined to the installations
of regular rows or desks arranged in a manner so the employees would not be allocated
specific rooms or cubicles. However, with the rapid growth in the business environments and
expansion of business operations and functions, the organizations have attempted to adopt
innovative measures with the help of technological developments in order to improve the
productivity and performance of the employees. In order to ensure such a personal and
professional development of the employees, advancements in technology have enabled the
business organization to adopt an evolved concept of open working environments within the
scope of their business. In order to evaluate and assess the changes in the level of employee
satisfaction and thereby their performance within the scope of business organizations,
innovations have been introduced in terms of the planning and designing of office spaces
(Brennan, Chugh, and Kline 2002). In this regard, it may be mentioned that the modern
notions of open working environments include the scope of a mixture of cubicles, open
workstations, group workstations and private offices depending upon the requirements and
needs of the employees, as well as the hierarchy in the organizational structure.
Impact of Open Working Environment on Management Practices
The working environment in which the employees are subjected to makes a huge
impact on the organizational performance as a whole. In this regard, the working
environment of the business organizations using an open or closed system for the workplace
directly determines the efficiency of the management practices being adopted in the
organization. The working environment of different business organizations directly structures
and develops the organizational culture that will be established and adopted by the employees
within the scope of their business operations (Konnikova 2014). Such an organizational
culture in turn directly affects the attitude and behavior of the employees not only towards

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each other but also towards the organization as a whole. In this regard, the management
practices of these business organization directly depend on the dominant organizational
culture. In the case that the organizational culture is that of a clan type, where are the
individual members can interact among each other in an efficient manner and work in groups
or teams, a democratic style of management practice can be proven to be highly effective. It
will be so because, in such a working environment, the democratic style of management will
allow the individual employees to freely form opinions and suggest their ideas for the overall
development and success of not only their departments and teams but the entire business
organization as a whole.
The system of open working environments has often been developed and adopted in
business organization in order to provide the employees with a stress-free working culture
and maximize the interaction and cooperation among each of the members performing their
specific functions and operations. The desk-sharing aspect of the open working environment
in business organization facilitate the employees to form effective connections among
themselves, thereby enhancing their interpersonal skills as well as team building capabilities
(Duffy, Cave and Worthington 2016). In this regard, the structure and design of open
working environments enables the use of efficient management practices that require the
employees and other members to collaborate with each other and work in teams or groups.
The operations of group projects and tasks can be managed with the help of open working
environments efficiently as the members belonging from the same team along with their
leaders may be able to operate together by sitting in a particular section of the office floor.
This in turn will enable them to interact with each other freely and participate in their
respective responsibilities and tasks in the same project or assignment.
However, another important aspect regarding the management practices of open
working environments apart from efficiency in team building and project management, is that

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of conflict management. In the case of the employees being able to interact with each other
freely, they may often be faced with conflicting opinions and ideas, which in turn may in turn
cause discrepancies within the operations of the team as a whole. In such cases, leaders are
required to efficiently manage such conflicts in order to serve the interest of the team as well
as the organization itself. The lack of personal spaces in the open working environment,
further makes the conflict management process challenging, as the employees involved in the
misunderstanding or argument would have to continue to make interactions with each other
in order to perform the tasks assigned to them (Bernstein and Waber 2020).
There are certain important considerations to be made regarding the management
practices within the scope of open working environments (Despenic et al. 2017). These
considerations pertain to the aspects of degree of personalization of the spaces assigned to the
employees, the amount of space available for each employee, the décor and setup of the
working environment, and the amount of resources that is available to each employee
(Bernstein and Waber 2020). These considerations are important to determine the
management practices of the human resource management systems, so that they may be able
to integrate the interests of the employees with the interests of the organization in an efficient
manner.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Open Working Environment
As discussed earlier, the scope working environment structure adopted by several
business organizations throughout the world, involves a collection of infrastructure in the
form of rows or desks, thereby preventing the employees to be confined into closed spaces of
rooms or cubicles. However, in many cases the open working environments have
incorporated a mixture of the closed elements of cubicles and open elements of collective
rows and desks as per the needs of the employees. In this regard, it may be observed that in
terms of layout and planning there are several advantage s and disadvantages that may be

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observed within the scope of the open working environments. The advantages of these
systems have been identified to be the following:
 The open working environments can be economical for the organization as it enables
the provision of larger working spaces due to the absence of individual cubicles
(Krajčík, Kudiváni and Mahdavi 2017).
 It enhances the interaction and engagement of the employees among each other and
thereby increases the level of their cooperation with each other in order to
successfully achieve organizational goals and targets.
 The open working environments facilitate effective management of the teams and
individual members as they can directly interact with each other on the office floor.
 The open working environments can successfully enhance the efficiency of business
operations, as the members can directly communicate with each other without having
to go through the hassles of communicating with each other through phone calls or
emails.
 Open working environments can also enable the incorporation and implementation of
changes in a successful and efficient manner. Since all the members of the
organization operate within a close contact with each other, the process of integrating
changes within the system of business operations becomes significantly easier.
Furthermore, changes in the layout or design of the workspace can be easily
incorporated as there will need to be fewer changes to be made.
On the other hand, there are also several challenges or disadvantages that may be faced as a
result of an incorporation of pen working environments within the scope of business
organizations. In this regard, the disadvantages of this system has been identified to be the
following:

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 Open working environments can prove to be chaotic as the members of the
organization may engage in frequent communication with each other in a direct
manner so as to be able to coordinate regarding assigned tasks and projects
(Haapakangas et al. 2018). Furthermore, in the case that communication is made
using phone-calls, they can be overheard by other employees easily due to the open
structure of the working environment.
 The system of open working environments may often lead to conflicts among the
various members of the organization as they may be faced with differences in opinion
or misunderstandings in spite of frequent communication with each other. In such a
case, the role of the management to resolve such conflicts may become increasingly
challenging due to the lack of personal spaces (Bernstein and Waber 2020).
Information Flow
Information flow in business operations can be made in several ways depending upon
the organizational structure as well as the organizational culture. In terms of closed working
environments, the information flow from the managers to the other employees may be made
through several direct and indirect methods. The scope of downward, upward and horizontal
information flow is facilitated through a means of various indirect and direct methods in
written or verbal forms.
However, on the other hand, the information flow in open working environments have
been observed to be mostly direct and verbal in nature. It is so because the employees and
members of the organization are not confined to their respective cubicles but can easily
communicate among each other directly. However, there are certain disadvantages in such
information flow, as the lack of personal spaces in the scope of the work environment, may
enable the other employees and members to overhear conversations. Such leakage of
information may in turn cause discrepancies and misunderstanding within the scope of

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business operations and hamper the successful achievement of organizational targets and
objectives.
Conclusion
From the above discussion regarding the scope of open working environments, it may
be said that organizational culture plays an important role in determining organizational
efficiency. In this regard, the structure and culture of the organization, even in terms of the
design and layout of the work place has several implications on the sort of management
practices that need to be adopted by the organization.

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References
Bernstein, E., Waber, B., (2020) “The truth about open offices” The Australian Feb. 21st
URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-deal-magazine/the-truth-about-open-
offices/newsstory/78d1fe051d771270c9e428ab5d2b7c91 (accessed 25/2/20).
Brennan, A., Chugh, J.S. and Kline, T., 2002. Traditional versus open office design: A
longitudinal field study. Environment and behavior, 34(3), pp.279-299.
Despenic, M., Chraibi, S., Lashina, T., & Rosemann, A. (2017). Lighting preference profiles
of users in an open office environment. Building and Environment, 116, 89-107.
Duffy, F., Cave, C. and Worthington, J. eds., 2016. Planning office space. Elsevier.
Evans, G.W. and Johnson, D., 2000. Stress and open-office noise. Journal of applied
psychology, 85(5), p.779.
Haapakangas, A., Hongisto, V., Varjo, J., & Lahtinen, M. (2018). Benefits of quiet
workspaces in open-plan offices–Evidence from two office relocations. Journal of
Environmental Psychology, 56, 63-75.
Konnikova, M., 2014. The open-office trap. The New Yorker.
Krajčík, M., Kudiváni, L. and Mahdavi, A., 2017. Energy saving potential of personalized
ventilation applied in an open space office under winter conditions. In Applied Mechanics
and Materials (Vol. 861, pp. 417-424). Trans Tech Publications.