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Ideas in place
auditory, or procedural), as well as along the type of information employees can access (e.g., temporal, behavior, task). Regarding the latter, as the workplace is becoming more flexible and distributed (Schawbel, 2015), access to information when colleagues work (temporal transparency) and where they work (locational transparency) may prove relevant.
Lastly, we show how workplace transparency and flexibility interact, which is important because they are typically studied separately (see for example, Boell et al., 2016; Haapakangas et al., 2018; Maher & von Hippel, 2005; Rockmann & Pratt, 2015). We found a moderating role of workplace flexibility for idea sharing such that when employees were highly flexible in their work locations, the positive relationship between perceived access to information and how many ideas employees shared was weaker than when employees were spatially flexible. Thereby, we extend previous research, which focused on the sole effect of workplace flexibility on how familiar employees can become with each other and their work (Hinds & Kiesler, 2002), such as coworkers' role, interests, and capabilities (Hinds & Cramton, 2014). Nevertheless, our research also opens up avenues for future research. We used an objective measure for workplace flexibility (number of days working remotely), but employees may perceive the distance more subjectively (e.g., Wilson et al., 2008). Therefore, future research could focus on more subjective avenues by measuring how workplace flexibility is perceived by those engaging in it.
On a related note, another future study could be concerned with the role of impression management (Bernstein, 2017; Giacalone & Rosenfeld, 1989) in a transparent work setting. It is possible that employees use workplace transparency as a strategic resource by choosing to sit in more or less visible workplaces. Previous studies indicate that increased workplace transparency also leads to more impression management and similar behaviors (Giacalone & Rosenfeld, 1989). The latter stems from people’s general desire for privacy, which means that workplace transparency may actually have the opposite effect than what was desired by creating open places. This ‘transparency paradox’ (Stohl et al., 2016) should be considered by including both workplace transparency and
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