Page 122 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Reconfiguring workplaces
were collected retrospectively. Such data are often associated with the recall effect (Golden, 1992). To counteract this and improve recall, we asked about what happened in a particular instance, probed for details of the events, and used a visual timeline to situate the event. We believe that by asking the respondents for such an amount of detail (e.g., the location and people involved), they were only able to recall these events if they had taken place.
Second, we relied on verbal recollections of our participants about their experiences as the primary source of information. Thereby, our respondents were potentially able to filter out experiences and feelings that they might not want to share. We counteracted at least some of the effect by using complementary vlogs (short videos) and documents from the time of the closure to provide additional sources of data. However, future studies might want to study such a pronounced change during the time of the actual change and add ethnographic observations to their data. This could be further complemented by quantitative data, such as network data from face- to-face and electronic interaction, to conduct a mixed-methods study.
Third, we focused on the similarities across our respondents in the way that they adapted to working without a shared office. However, the two offices (old and new office) are also substantially distinct, and it may be fruitful to compare these as well to understand whether their roles within the workplace configuration differ. While our study provided us with a qualitative understanding of the configurations' impact on work relationship layers, a quantitative approach would be complementary. For example, one can imagine comparing the layered relationships (physical interactions through the use of sensors (Bernstein & Turban, 2018); digital interactions as usage data) and their effect on organizational outcomes.
3.6.3 Managerial implications
Our study also holds several learnings for employees and organizations engaging in distributed work. As employees in distributed work cannot depend on a shared office to facilitate encounters,
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