Teams and Ties April 2016 Teams and Ties Workflow, Organisational Cultures and the Role of Workplace Design Dr Kerstin Sailer Space Syntax Laboratory, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, UK Director of Research and Innovation, Spacelab, UK XXXVI Sunbelt Conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis, Newport Beach, 5-10 April 2016 @kerstinsailer
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Teams and Ties. Workflow, Organisational Cultures and the Role of Workplace Design
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Teams and Ties April 2016
Teams and Ties
Workflow, Organisational Cultures and the Role of
Workplace Design
Dr Kerstin Sailer
Space Syntax Laboratory, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, UK
Director of Research and Innovation, Spacelab, UK
XXXVI Sunbelt Conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis, Newport Beach, 5-10 April 2016
@kerstinsailer
Teams and Ties April 2016
Workflow, Organisational Cultures and the Role of
Workplace Design
Teams and Ties April 2016
The Role of Workplace Design
FACE TO FACE
INTERACTION
NETWORKS
construct affects
Layout of office building as affordance to face-to-face interaction networks
Teams and Ties April 2016
The Role of Workplace Design
Propinquity effect:
Co-workers with desks located closer to each other have a higher probability of
frequent face-to-face communication (Allen and Fustfeld 1976)
Including walking distance between desks improved models of interaction network
structures while controlling for network structural effects, team affiliation and perceived
usefulness between actors (Sailer and McCulloh 2012)
Floors as barriers:
Being located on different floors of an office building forms a significant barrier to
frequent face-to-face communication (Allen and Fustfeld 1976) → E-I index analysis shows
interaction internal to a floor can be as high as 91% of all interaction ties (Sailer 2010)
Teams and Ties April 2016
Introduction
Advertising Agency, Frankfurt
Very frequent face-to-face encounter
(several times a week)
Colour of nodes: Departments
Shape of nodes: Floor
What drives face-to-face
interaction within and across
departments in organisations?
What is the role of workplace
layout?
Teams and Ties April 2016
Types of Ties
Advertising Agency, Frankfurt
Very frequent face-to-face encounter
(several times a week)
Colour of nodes: Departments
Shape of nodes: Floor
Same dep,
same floor
Diff dep,
diff floor
Teams and Ties April 2016
Types of Ties
Tie: frequent face-to-face interaction → capacity for interaction limited due to cost;
Four types of ties between individuals (aggregated count by department):
SDSF – same department, same floor
organisational and spatial closeness, i.e.
localised patterns of interaction
DDSF – different department, same floor
spatial closeness, i.e. proximity /
watercooler effect
SDDF – same department, different floor
organisational closeness (distributed
department, matrix organisation)
DDDF – different department, different floor
no closeness, i.e. global interaction
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Teams and Ties April 2016
Types of Ties – Comparative Data Set
23 different organisations, 10414 staff members in total, organised in 578 departments
(mean size = 18.0) and distributed across 131 different floors (mean size = 945 sqm)
72% same dep ↔ 28% different dep
86% same floor ↔ 14% different floor
Teams and Ties April 2016
Methodology
SNA:
Online survey of each organisation; survey
distributed to all staff members; return quote: 49%
(lowest) to 90% (highest);
Asked each participant to name top 25 contacts and
indicate frequency of face-to-face encounter;
Analysis of network of strong ties (daily encounter);