Page 111 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Reconfiguring workplaces I missed.” (P23, manager, high tenure).
Third, concerning the employees' peripheral relationships, the lack of shared centrality impeded the peripheral relationships. An employee described how the shared office was important for establishing new connections and how its removal hindered them:
“I often had to work together with people who I had never seen. And normally, I could have just had a quick meeting at the office, like ‘Hey, let’s meet’. However, the majority of colleagues doesn’t work or live in [city]. So, they didn’t come to the [co-working space location in city]. So that was that. The physical contact was a lot less.” (P08, employee, low tenure)
The quote also shows how employees were able to organize their work more individually. In doing so, workers often made meeting agreements only within teams (core relationships) but did not consider their (potential) peripheral relationships. While this is conceivable – core relationships are based on actual, short term needs to interact – it nevertheless presented a hinder for potential interactions.
One exception was a particular group of employees with client- facing roles in account management and sales. For them, not only the number but also the composition of the peripheral relationships changed during the closure: “It was amazing because I met so many new people with who I am still in touch [...] My ecosystem really expanded.” (P02, employee, low tenure). The employee's external relationships (clients) were differently affected than their relationships with colleagues. Many employees worked at client locations during the time of the closure. One employee shared in a blog that, to some extent, the external relationships replaced the internal peripheral relationships: “Because the spontaneous encounters with colleagues at the office, those are sometimes spontaneous encounters with start-ups and partners.” (D101).
Overall, our findings emphasize how a change in the workplace 109