Page 105 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Reconfiguring workplaces
coworkers worked: “that was the conversation amongst colleagues, really. ‘Where do you work tomorrow?’” (P08, employee, low tenure). Thus, the employees perceived a change in locational transparency across the employees’ workplace configurations3.
The third dimension is negotiated legitimacy, which we defined as the accessibility of locations. We observed that as the workplace configuration changed, it was not only the case that a location was removed but also new ones added. For example, work expanded to a colleague’s home or a client’s office. One employee shared how the closure triggered negotiating access to new workplaces:
“I thought, I can just work at my colleague’s home. [...] I think that if the office hadn’t been closed, I wouldn’t have invited myself as easily. [...] When the office was still open, I never went to anyone’s home.” (P09, employee, low tenure)
Similarly, working at a client’s office was not only viewed by the employees as an option but supported by (some of) their clients: “We were offered a room [by our client]. And it changes how your contact is, it becomes much more informal and fun.” (P04, employee, medium tenure). Workplaces differ a lot along this dimension, such that a workplace may be accessible to some employees but not to others. For example, while every employee had access to the company-paid co-working space, each coworker decided who could work at their home.
3.5.2 Relationship layers at work
When we explored how workplace configurations shaped work relationships, we discovered that our respondents used a vocabulary of layers. They described a core, a mid-layer, and a peripheral layer of
3 It needs to be noted that in the specific situation where a configuration only has one center, locational transparency is linked to the first dimension, shared centrality.
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